Ron Howard @ JBFC: Pavarotti

Anyone who sold 100 million albums qualifies as a singer of “popular music.” For the ten million people who saw him perform live, Luciano Pavarotti was the voice and face of opera, even more so than Andrea Bocelli, whose career Pavarotti helped launch. He is sort of like the Louis Armstrong of opera, popular with listeners who otherwise never listen to their styles of music. (They also both performed with handkerchiefs.) Even if they already recognize the great tenor, viewers will learn a good deal about his life and music in Ron Howard’s documentary, Pavarotti (where the above figures were cited), which screens as part of the Ron Howard Retrospective at the JBFC.

Perhaps somewhat anticlimactically, Howard starts with the film’s best sequence, incorporating amateur video of Pavarotti’s impromptu concert in the Teatro Amazonas, the world class opera house built literally in the middle of Brazil’s Amazon region. Howard then rewinds to chronicle Pavarotti’s rise to fame. It seems strange in retrospect, but Pavarotti was one of the first stars of the American Express “do you know me?” commercials.

Of course, just about everyone would soon know Pavarotti, thanks to his ambitious concert promoters, who found Pavarotti could draw just as well as rock stars. In fact, the tenor was recruited for his first stadium engagement when Bruce Springsteen backed out of his commitment, leaving the London concert producer holding the bag.

Howard has no shortage of material to draw from Pavarotti’s appearances with Johnny Carson, Phil Doahue, and pretty much all the morning show hosts of the 1980s. However, the film ignores his dramatic, non-operatic big screen debut in the widely panned Yes, Giorgio, maybe because nobody involved wanted to talk about it.

Yet, in general, Howard covers the bad times as well as the good. He fully examines the circumstances surrounding Pavarotti’s divorce and his romance with Nicoletta Mantovani, whom the Italian press rather unfairly characterized as a homewrecker. (Howard clearly establishes that she wasn’t Pavarotti’s first affair.) The film also acknowledges—and takes issue—with the late career criticism Pavarotti endured from opera purists. Indeed, Bono uses language jazz fans would appreciate to argue real artists use their life experience to interpret a song, which is what he heard in the mature Pavarotti.

Howard certainly understands pacing and storytelling—and that skillset is clearly evident in Pavarotti. If you want to learn more about the tenor, this film gets the job done. It also features not one, but two killer renditions of Nessun Dorma, one solo and recorded as part of the original “Three Tenors” concert. Fittingly, both Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras provide personal memories of their friend and colleague.

Frankly, Pavarotti would not have been out of place airing as part of American Masters, were it not for the obvious fact the tenor was obviously Italian. Even if you do not regularly listen to opera, it is surprisingly nostalgic to revisit the era of the tenor’s mediagenic celebrity. Highly recommended, Pavarotti screens Sunday (8/16) and Wednesday (8/19) at the JBFC.