The Tg1 special broadcast on 25 December at 11.45 pm by Leonardo Metalli is an exclusive document. Shot between Italy and the United States, it tells the true story of the king of tenors, Luciano Pavarotti. Elementary teacher with a passion for singing, inherited from his father Fernando Panettiere in Modena since 1940 and amateur tenor of the Corale Rossini.
It all began right in that bakery where Luciano lent a hand to his father, his mother Adele worked in the tobacco factory and his sister Gabriella wanted to become a physical education teacher. From the testimonies of his family members to the video material restored with a past/present narrative technique, the documentary portrays everything as if time had never passed. The oratory, the closest friends of trump, football and tennis; the passion for horses. The unknown side of Big Luciano, from travels to cooking, from restaurants to his favorite dishes. The secret stories with the two families. Four daughters, two wives Adua and Nicoletta; ten secretaries, women often protagonists of his choices.
His second life in the United States, over thirty years in New York from his legendary 1972 debut at the Metropolitan Opera House where he is still considered a legend today. An award given to the memory of the artist by the Italian American association in Washington DC, the NIAF National Italian American Foundation, will be exhibited in the house museum in Modena where the tenor lived until his last days. Today the tenor’s house is visited by thousands of people, both foreign and Italian. A place where the memorabilia that tell his story are kept and which this documentary presents in preview.
And then his interpretations from the least known to those that have made him famous in every corner of the planet. A film with unpublished documents such as the first musical encounters with the three tenors Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras directed by Zubin Metha, destined to become an unprecedented worldwide success. His sympathy, continuous jokes and his favorite artists from Bono Vox to Sting and Tony Renis, the latter author of the duet with Celine Dion. And again Zucchero who convinced him to listen to Bocelli for the first time and wrote Miserere. Pavarotti’s pop breakthrough was thus the “Pavarotti and Friends” was born. Then the meeting with the tenor Vittorio Grigolo who sang with Pavarotti as a child. Finally the voice of Stefano Accorsi who tells the Modena about him.
The documentary will be translated for the English channel of Rai and for the international audience that followed Big Luciano.
