At his best, which was in evidence often in San Jose, he still has the sweetest voice to be heard anywhere. His portamento was subtle, his emotions raw, his phrasing of a piece with the music's sublime intentions. Pavarotti's honeyed sound has changed little since he began partnering Joan Sutherland in the 1960s. Despite reduced breath control, what was a wonder then remains so today, just as the well-known drawbacks of his hefty figure and light acting talent matter little to fans of ravishing vocals. Domingo, who is also artistic director of the Washington Opera, has slowly and masterfully taken over every corner of the repertory and made it his own.
New names come up often enough, but the opera world is in a tenor crisis.
With the waning of the careers of the likes of Montserrat Caballe and Renata Scotto, of Marilyn Horne, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Ruggero Raimondi, there are young singers from Cheryl Studer and Cecilia Bartoli to Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Wolfgang Holzmair ready to take up the mantle. But there are no new tenors promising anything near the excitement and vocal splendor of Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti. Many opera lovers complain that a sports arena is no place to appreciate these rare talents, that the sound in such a barn is closer to that of a big car radio than to an actual human voice, that watching huge television screens is no substitute for experiencing a singer singing live close enough to be seen. Then again, all three tenors continue to offer that very real sort of musical experience elsewhere. The century is almost over, and we still have these three.