Pavarotti and His Girl Group

Pavarotti and his “Three Sopranos” – Kathleen Cassello, Kallen Esperian, and Cynthia Lawrence – wowed the crowd at London’s Earls Court Saturday night. “There he stood, a smiling barrel in black and white,” writes Geoff Brown in today’s London Times. “He might appear a mile away, depending on your seat, but the sound brought him into the palm of your hand.”

Brown questions whether all this stadium activity is wise for the health of the 64-year-old tenor’s voice, noting that selections from “La Boheme” and “Othello” were sung at “a fortissimo blast, generally trading subtle effects for the joys of the Big Sing." Dubbing the trio of American women (all of them not so coincidentally winners of the Pavarotti International Voice Competition) “the marketeers’ latest whezze,” Brown comments, “Looking on loan from MGM…they warbled, grinned and swayed together through riotously fruit medleys.”

By the end, he says, The Tenor’s voice was sounding worn and conductor Leone Magiera was having a rough time keeping the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and his star singers in sync. Brown defines the “Traviata” drinking song, an encore dedicated to the newlywed royals, a “mess.”