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Stage presence is one thing, acting another. Pavarotti is often an indifferent actor, though in a broad role like the bumpkin in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment he can be an effective comedian. His chief asset, especially in romantic roles, is his height, which offsets his distinctly un-dashing waistline. "I never look at how wide they are, but how tall," says Soprano Beverly Sills. "It is a relief to be able to put your head on a tenor's shoulder." What carries Pavarotti through is his patent sincerity and gut-level identification with his characters. "I can see myself as Rodolfo in Bohème," he says. "Rodolfo is a figure of genuine emotion. This is the real thing, so real that when Mimi enters I feel I want to take care of this woman."
With his extra measure of Ponselle's "certain something," Pavarotti occupies a unique position among the tenors of today. Placido Domingo, 38, his nearest rival, has a superbly smooth, rich voice and a wider range of roles—he sings the weighty Othello as well as bel canto parts—but he sometimes loses impact because of a veiled timbre and somewhat muted personality. Jon Vickers, 52, can match Pavarotti's intensity and puts more serious thought behind his performing, but his is an entirely different kind of voice: rugged, heroic, best suited to dramatic works such as Otello, Les Troyens and Peter Grimes. Nicolai Gedda, an elegant, unfailingly attractive singer, is a supremely versatile stylist, at home in several languages; at 54, however, he is understandably not a powerhouse. Perhaps the challenge ultimately will come from a younger singer like Jose Carreras, 32, though to date he has shown neither the strength nor the subtlety of Pavarotti.
Any kind of professional singing is a dicey venture, requiring as it does that the performer stake his prosperity, career and identity on barely more than an inch of exquisitely fragile larynx. But the pressure on tenors is perhaps the most harrowing of all. The reason is that the tenor voice is an unnatural one, especially in the rarefied range above the staff—the four or five notes from G to high C or D. For a male singer to reach such heights while retaining all the power and virility of his lower range—and, preferably, subordinating the sheer physical feat to an artistic purpose—is a rare and exhilarating achievement. This is the heroic madness of the tenor. He girds himself like a gladiator for an awesome exertion. Then, striving upward, he reaches for triumph, knowing that at the same time he is cruelly exposing himself to the most humiliating failure. No performance recovers from a broken high C.