Despite a sad heart, I wasn't able to rig my schedule for maximum Pavarotti mourning yesterday--I heard he died in the middle of the night and at that point clicking on various classical stations' streams wasn't providing much. I eventually caught a few things: the Tommasini piece in the Times my mom pointed me to was great--it addressed the inevitable and frankly informative comparison with Domingo well--as was their regular obit, and the Von Rhein piece in the Trib was fine if somewhat fabphobic (Pavarotti was fat? really? no way). It was great fun to hear some of a 1975 rebroadcast of a Studs Terkel interview on WFMT.

The rest of what I happened to catch (TV, internet news), however, struck me in its even lazier than expected cluelessness. There's this shape the media wants to give the careers of artists of a certain stature, whether it fits or not--blowing up huge right from their first moment in the public eye (LP didn't), a predictable bell-like curve of popularity that matches the worth of their work (the dude more or less sold out, depending on how you feel about it), a gradual decline with more sporadic performing at the end of life (ABC didn't even mention LP being banned from the Lyric). He also was often credited in these pieces with, as people chant, "reviving a dying art form," which doesn't work either (especially two months after the late Beverly Sills was credited with the same). Pavarotti was just very very popular; at times very very good; and after getting famous, very very Crossed Over. Which LP and his handlers made happen, of course; if he was opera's Michael Jordan, then he went way past buying and playing on the Wizards toward the end of his career.

One aural inevitability from the hoo-ha yesterday was hearing "Nessun dorma" 10,000 times (I swear Cynthia McFadden called it "Nessum dorma"); an aria which, I was surprised to discover from Diane Sawyer, means "Never Sleep!" Oh really. Well okay then. No victory for the sleeping! Insomnia for all! I love "Nessun Dorma," despite inflated usage that's threatening to squeeze it dry, but that is not what I was craving--my ear wanted something from Tosca or fuck, why not even "Ah! mes amis!" from Fille du Regiment, if you wanna hear something heroically huge. No, I am not a Three Tenors person, not a duet-with-Bono person--I mostly tuned that stuff out--but I loved Pavarotti, and yesterday (to say it again) made me realize that I still do, despite all the goofy shit he did. It was bothersome to watch in all the obituarial coverage his complex artistic life be fairly thoroughly yadda-yadda-ed. Although there's one thing people said over and over that is true--you never, having heard that voice once, mistook him for anybody else again. Very very good, sometimes too good to be believed.