Night Pavarotti relished six-course dinners — between acts

AT THE Antique Theatre in Orange, a Roman ampitheatre, that great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti had come to sing.

The crowd was hushed and thrilled as he stepped onto the stage: black hair, black beard, white tie and tails, a voluminous white handkerchief floating from his left hand. Each time before he began to sing, he spread his arms to the crowd. He put his palms together and bowed his head, and then produced angelic music.

And each time he finished with a ritual that he would repeat throughout the evening: an upward flick of the head at the end of the final note, a vast grin, arms spread wide before a handshake with the conductor. Before the applause had died away he

was escorted to the curtained entrance and disappeared. I imagined he had gone to rest his vocal chords and have a restorative spoonful of honey.

But a woman of operatic girth beside me had a different explanation. ‘It’s my belief,’ she said, ‘he is taking a light dinner between arias.’ The star, she said, was a big man and a gourmet. The performance was long. To sing as he sang was demanding work. It was logical he should sustain himself during periods when he was not on stage.

The programme had been constructed to allow for a wellspaced, six-course snack to be consumed while the orchestra diverted the audience.

Towards the end, Pavarotti returned wearing a scarf that hung to his waist — against the cool night air, or so I thought. Madame, of course, knew better.

He has had a small accident with some sauce, she said, and the scarf is there to conceal the spots on his white waistcoat. Having proved her case, she settled back to enjoy the rest of the concert.