People might have heard of but might not know how interesting his journey was and how powerful his art form was
Director Ron Howard dives into the life of the world’s most famous tenor in new documentary Pavarotti. He tells LAURA HARDING about discovering the man behind the voice
LSUCIANO PAVAROTTI had a rare kind of star quality, one that made people who never cared about opera sit up and pay attention. Through the sheer force of his talent, personality and charisma, he brought high art to the masses.
This is never more apparent than in the intimacy of Ron Howard’s new documentary about the tenor, which aims to show us the man behind the soaring arias.
“Pavarotti worked to try to remind the world that opera is actually popular entertainment,” says the film-maker.
“That’s why I wanted to include the subtitles, because when I started understanding the lyrics, I realised it’s not just that they’re arias, they’re great songs, they’re telling great stories, soulful stories.
“We found great performances from Luciano at different points in his life.
“We found a performance where he was roughly that age singing an aria that actually dramatised a lot of what he was going through, whether that was a moment of triumph or falling in love or sadness or despair.
“And I discovered that we could use opera as it’s really meant to be, to tell the story, in
Nthis case the story of Pavarotti.”
The Oscar-winning director, best known for his blockbuster films Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code, has recently made a foray into music documentaries with the award-winning The Beatles: Eight Days A Week and Made In America, about Jay-Z’s one-off music festival.
“What I’ve discovered with the documentaries, and I think audiences have discovered it, is that it’s a really rich storytelling discipline and medium,” says the former Happy Days star, who is married to Cheryl and together have four children – including actress Bryce Dallas Howard.
He says it is different working on documentaries as opposed to a scripted film.
“The difference is that a documentary, it sort of has to present itself to you,” Ron says.
what it is to be that kind of artist, that level of artist who commits themselves, expresses themselves through their art for an entire lifetime.
“And I thought his interview was a real gift not only to Luciano’s family, but to audiences, audiences who love great music.”
While some critics have questioned whether the film is too soft-focused in its approach, brushing over some of the flaws of a complicated man, Ron says he let the story do the talking.
“You kind of have to let the tone present itself to you. This is not biography, it’s not a piece of journalism.
“There’s no voice-over, there’s no narrator telling you what they think the story is about or what the themes are.
“You sort of have to find the footage, do the interviews and see what is the greater truth that people are telling us.
“In this case, it was that he was a remarkable individual – he was full of joy, he wanted that to be infectious, he wanted to bring joy to other people.
“Along the way, with his big appetites, for all kinds of things, including romance and relationships, he would make some choices, some decisions that could be very difficult, emotionally difficult, for people.
“And yet that’s not what people remembered about him. In other words, that was an aspect of their relationship, maybe even a regrettable one, maybe even hurtful but it wasn’t the headline.
“The headline was, ‘Wow, what a remarkable individual. I’m glad I had time with him. I’m glad I had this relationship despite some of the difficulties along the way’.
“And we kept seeing that over and over again, so that became the spirit of our film.”