Luciano Pavarotti Rules!

The Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games was cruising along on schlock control, when a funny thing happened: Luciano Pavarotti came out and kicked so much ass that he elevated the importance of the entire event. The guy looks much older but he seemed in better health. After looking one biscuit away from 400 pounds for years he actually seemed to have lost a lot of weight. And it really is a great style of singing. You have your Aaron Nevilles softly crooning through the first half of the National Anthem, and then Aretha Franklin blows the roof off the joint. It’s singing in control but as loud as you can, and Pavarotti can still deliver. He was magnificent tonight. Maybe it’s the last sign of getting older but opera is starting to sound really accessible to me. I’ve tried before, but maybe life was too easy back then. You need to feel the weariness of a certain number of years to appreciate the emotion and defiance in Pavarotti’s voice. You certainly didn’t need to know the words to feel what he was saying. Pavarotti rocked. He threw down. He testified. The Winter Games are off to a great start.