Luciano Pavarotti: a tragic tale

An opera in five parts by JOHN WALSH. Starring the World's Biggest Opera Star, his Two Wives, the Italian Authorities, and a Cast of Millions of Adoring Fans.

Act I

The year is 1994. Duke Luciano sits in sultan-like splendour in a hammock on the terrace of his $10 million home in Modena. (It's more a small village than a home, actually. It's got its own private racecourse and owner-approved restaurant.) He has just had a modest lunch of fettuccine all'arrabbiata with a side order of meatballs. Replete, he sings of his success, for he is a man who has conquered the world. Since he linked up with Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1990, the Three Tenors have become the most successful act in the history of classical music.

Since his version of Puccini's Nessun Dorma!, with its ludicrously sustained penultimate note, became the theme song for Italia 90 in the same year, millions of football-loving, philistine Euro-oiks from Wigan to Warsaw have started to take a passing interest in classical music. As a result, he has now sold more records than anyone in history.

His song of triumph is interrupted by the arrival of his secretary, NICOLETTA MANTOVANI. Though sharing a family name with a man who was a byword in teeth-melting light-orchestral slush, she is attractive and a dream of youth at 24. The Duke is 58. He sings of his declining powers, her innocence and youth, her stenographical talents, his desire to see her with nothing on. Signorina Mantovani capitulates. She climbs into his hammock. Enter a paparazzo. He photographs them kissing as the straining canvas sways to and fro ...

Act II

Summer 1996. The direct taxation offices of the Italian Ministry of Finance. Two MINOR CIVIL SERVANTS are finalising the details of a new crackdown on tax-evading celebrities. They sing a duet expressing their pleasure in having nailed Sophia Loren and extracted $10 million from the skiing champion Alberto Tomba. They sing of corruption in the showbiz industry and the fashion world, and how they enjoy putting the frighteners on millionaires called Giorgio.

Enter MASSIMO ("The Roman") ROMANO, the direct tax office's direttore generale. He is a driven man. In a passionate aria to his quaking associates, he explains how he cannot rest while work-shy singers and no-brain sports personalities get paid a fortune for doing sod-all from morning till night and think they can get away with not paying their legitimate tax burden by pretending to live abroad.

Enter, with a crashing of cymbals and booming of kettledrums, the Satanic figure of OTTAVIANO ("The Turk") DEL TURCO, Italy's Minister of Finance. He greets Sgr Romano with an embrace and pledges his support for il fisco's bold initiative. They sing a duet, pledging themselves to work tirelessly until they snare some really, really big figure in, say, the Italian music world, as an example to other villains.

"We may not have to wait too long, too long, too long," sings Del Turco. "For this very day, this day, this very day, I have been rung up by a lady called Adua ... "

Act III

It's coming up to Christmas 1997 and ADUA VERONI, Duchess of Pavarotti, is on the warpath. She has had it up to here with men. Married to Duke Luciano for 35 years, she has been his agent, his theatrical manager and career adviser over three decades. And now she has been cast in the bin like yesterday's zuppa di verdura because of some chit of a girl from the typing pool. It's been all over the papers. Troppo embarrassamento. She collapses onto a sofa as she sings of her misery. She is losing not only a husband, but also a livelihood, a salary, a pension. "The divorce settlement," she cries on a vertiginous crescendo, "had better be good, had better be good, had better be good. Many millions of lire shall be mine. Per Adua ad astra ["for Adua the sky's the limit"]. Because of his cruelty and falseness in love, I shall take him to the lavanderia."

Enter BRITNEA, a maidservant. She approaches timidly to tell the Duchess that the lawyers have called. They have left an envelope, but were too frightened of the Duchess' wrath to stick around and chat. The Duchess opens the envelope with a 23cm stiletto, gripped convulsively in her hand. It's the divorce court settlement. She has demanded $230 million. The courts have not granted it.

"Stronzo!" cries the Duchess, flinging herself on an adjacent Ottoman. "How can they deny me? Two hundred and thirty million is niente to the Fat One. He eats that much every week in backstage potato snacks between Yes, they call me Mimi and Your tiny hand is frozen." According to the newspapers, Il Bastardo's personal fortune is worth $500 million. Why should she not (dammit) get half? She lifts her tear-stained, kohl-streaked eyes to the mirror. Wait a minute, she thinks. While we're on the subject of money, isn't it time the tax authorities wised up to Luciano? For Adua, being his manager, agent and fixer, is prepared to say that he spends the lion's share of his time, not in a can't-swing-a-cat apartment in Monte Carlo (yeah, that's so likely) but in his personal Xanadu of Modena. She knows where he lives, principal-residence-wise. Tax-wise.

Act IV

July 2000. A street in Milan. Duke Luciano is a sad figure. The emotional strain of last year's divorce has left him looking shrunken and haggard. His weight, combined with the onset of arthritis, has resulted in knee and hip joint replacement surgery. Bad luck has dogged his steps and he sings plaintively of how troubles come not in single spies but in battalions. He has had to scale down his concert appearances, infuriating his fans. He cancelled a guest appearance in Tosca at the Met. He pulled out of a tribute evening to Alfredo Kraus in Madrid (the audience stood on their chairs and yelled). He fell over on-stage the other day while singing Verdi. And even when he remains upright, his concerts aren't greeted with the same adulation any more. A charity spectacular in June in front of 20,000 people was called a "musically worthless bore" by Il Messagero. The English papers now routinely make fun of his immobility on stage, his tiny gestures, his relentless bandana-wiping, his need to sit down on enormous rocks that have no obvious connection with the opera's staging. Oh, and his voice. He's now 65, and they're singing, "Isn't it time he packed it all in and retired?" behind his back.

But the Duke and Ottaviano "The Turk" have met and, in a touching duet, hatched a deal by which Pavarotti will pay $25,000 in back-taxes, and in instalments. Which is why he is here today at the Ministry of Finance. With a display of chutzpah as immense as his Sunday trousers, he strides into the marble office of the ministry, flanked by TV crews, journalists and photographers, and hands over a cheque for $7000 as his first instalment. The Turk beams. He calls Pavarotti a shining example to all Italians. And the now-vindicated Big Lucy explains that he is coughing up because he is "an honourable Italian citizen."

Disaster. The singing stops. All around him, fans and pressmen scratch their heads. How can he say that, when his whole case rests on the fact that Pavarotti is a citizen of Monaco, pays taxes wherever in the world he sings, and therefore is precisely not an Italian citizen?

The public prosecutors, dressed in all-over black, are sitting like buzzards and listening. Their job is to nail tax-dodgers and they take Pavarotti's agreement to pay as an admission of guilt. They exit the stage and go to check the books at the Guardia di Finanza, where they conclude that he had evaded a total tax bill of 10 billion lire ($10 million) between 1989 and 1995.

Act V

Saturday, April 28, 2001. A stage in the centre of Modena is decorated with floral bunting for the climactic concert. The town is Pavarotti's birthplace. He is Modena's favourite son, as he was once the world's favourite singer, and they know he is in trouble. Two months earlier, on 16 February, a judge in town - that's right, oh cruel irony, a judge in Modena - ordered that the great man should stand trial for tax evasion on May 2. If convicted, he could face three years in jail. (The proceedings were adjourned until September 17.)

For today, however, everything is geared towards celebration. For it was 40 years ago that Pavarotti first sang in public and launched one of the most successful careers in the history of classical singing. Tonight is a big anniversary gala concert to fete the maestro. His friend Jose Carreras is a guest, as is Roberto Alagna, widely tipped for a role in a new-generation Three Tenors. They pay emotional tributes to the great man, who sings (inevitably) his favourite bits from La Boheme and Aida. The applause is rapturous, sustained, ecstatic, full of love and admiration for a man whose huge appeal transcends national and musical boundaries but for whom all Italians, most Brits and indeed most Europeans feel a warm and unforced affection.

The end of this drama isn't quite in sight. At a hearing two days after the concert, which Pavarotti didn't attend (though he sent Ms Mantovani), the case was adjourned until September. But the legal crux of the matter is whether this "citizen of the world" has his heart in Italy or somewhere else.

For tax reasons, his heart should be in Monte Carlo, like a good tax exile. In fact, for emotional reasons, he cannot stay away from his beloved Italy, his racecourse, his restaurant. But the exact whereabouts of his heart, his emotional centre, his fullest loyalties and deepest feelings, has never really been in doubt. And that is what may be going to consign him to a very un-operatic dungeon.

This richly comic and peculiar drama has been growing darker and darker. It may yet end as the Shakespearean tragedy of a man who couldn't bear to leave his home. King Lucy?

- INDEPENDENT