Italian Tenor Luciano Pavarotti, Superstar of Opera

Ultimately, Mr. Pavarotti captured the public imagination as no tenor since Enrico Caruso, whose name he regularly invoked. "Probably the biggest similarity between Pavarotti and Caruso is the way each could envelop an audience," the late soprano Rosa Ponselle, who knew both men, said in 1979. "Each could make every person feel that he or she was being sung to individually."

Luciano Pavarotti was born Oct. 12, 1935, in Modena, a northern city renowned for its love of opera. Even his father, a baker by trade, sang tenor in local productions. His mother labored in a cigarette factory with the mother of soprano Mirella Freni, who became a frequent leading lady to Mr. Pavarotti on world stages.

Standing over six feet tall and somewhat athletic in his youth, Mr. Pavarotti excelled in soccer as a young man. He gravitated to opera as a profession and was good enough to qualify for voice training at Modena's Istituto Magistrale, which he said saved him from his mother's attempt to make him into an accountant.

He taught elementary school and sold insurance while vying in opera competitions. Among his early instructors were Modena tenor Arrigo Pola, who sensed his brilliance and taught him free of charge, and Ettore Campogalliani in the city of Mantua. Mr. Pavarotti underwent intensive regimens on posture, spending six months alone on how to hold his jaw.

After several misses, Mr. Pavarotti won an opera contest in 1961 and made his debut that year as Rodolfo in "La Boheme." After years touring Europe, he made his American debut in 1965 with the Greater Miami Opera in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" when he substituted for another tenor at the last minute.

His Miami co-star, Joan Sutherland, became one of Mr. Pavarotti's prominent early supporters and took him on tour with her to her native Australia. They also recorded some of his earliest and best-loved albums.

He credited Sutherland's husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, with recognizing his potential to reach incredibly high notes. Supposedly Bonynge tricked him into reaching high C while accompanying the singer as Tonio in Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment," and the result was so strikingly beautiful that it became one of Mr. Pavarotti's signature accomplishments.

On Nov. 23, 1968, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut, again as Rodolfo in "Boheme." Critic Peter G. Davis, writing in the New York Times, faulted Mr. Pavarotti's "stiff" acting but was enthusiastic about "the natural beauty of his voice."

"Any tenor who can toss off high C's with such abandon, successfully negotiate delicate diminuendo effects, and attack Puccinian phrases so fervently is going to win over any 'La Boheme' audience, and Pavarotti had them eating out of his hand," Davis wrote.

He went on to sing more than 375 times with the Met, including his dazzling work again as Tonio, a peasant, with Sutherland as his love interest in "Regiment" in 1972. Afterward, he was promoted by his record company as the "King of the High C's" and appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" to demonstrate his skill. This became one of his earliest opportunities to reach a wider audience beyond the opera world.

Mr. Pavarotti was renowned for the beauty and freedom of his upper register. "When singing high notes I feel like a show jumper before a two meters-plus bar," he once said. "Stretched to my limits. Excited and happy but with a strong undercurrent of fear. The moment I actually hit the note, I almost lose consciousness. A physical, animal sensation seizes me. Then, after it has been successfully negotiated, I regain control."

Yet he could be a maddeningly lazy interpreter -- in 1992 he lip-synced his way through a concert in Italy -- and his attempts to move into heavy roles such as Otello and Don Carlo were met with an indifferent press and, on at least one occasion, outright heckling.