On February 12,1978, Luciano Pavarotti gave the first recital ever from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. His audience was not merely the 4,000 who packed the Met to standing-room-only capacity, for it was televised live throughout the United States and numbered in the millions. That afternoon was the crowning moment in what is a fairly recent development in the tenor's international career.
He is unique, as Stephen E. Rubin points out in his chapter or Pavarotti in the book "The Tenors." in that, for so youthful a singer, he has embarked as a full-fledged recitalist. "Italians in general," Rubin writes, "tend to avoid a serious preoccupation with the Mediterranean equivalent of a lieder evening. Of course, there are some notable exceptions to this rule -- Schipa, Gigli, Tagliavini, di Stefano -- but few began as young or with the remarkable success of Pavarotti.
"He realizes that most singers start concertizing at the end of their careers, but is not quite sure it makes sense. 'Generally they do this because opera is heavy,' Pavarotti says. 'But I tell you, I don't know what is heavier. To sing twenty or twenty-five pieces is much more difficult than one opera. I talk about artistically, vocally, and physically. You know, there's quite a lot of movement in a recital, going and coming coming and going.'"
But Pavarotti explains his willingness to give so fully of him self with recitals: "I want to go to the people who cannot come to me." Still, as Rubin concludes, "It's hard to believe that even he, in his wildest imaginings, ever dreamed of the kind of response his solo appearances would genecate." From the stage of the Met to a high-school auditorium in Victoria, Texas, and dozens of cities in between, the announcement of Pavarotti in recital has become another way of saying "Sold Out."
His program at the Met was a canny mixing of operatic arias, Italian melodies and songs by operatic composers. This LP recalls some of the highlights from the generous program he sang that afternoon, a program which was a serenade to a nation.
First came a pair of arias from two different centuries of opera but each in their way a proving ground of the singer's art. "Unafurtiva lagrima" takes place in the last act of Gaetano Donizetti's "L'elisir d'amore," a Pavarotti specialty. Nemorino, a young peasant boy, reflects on "the pearly tear" he saw streaming furtively down the cheek of his sweetheart Adina as she prepares to marry the dashing Sgt. Belcore. It is music of rare melancholy, and the purity of the melodic line far removes it from the standard operatic outpouring.
"Che farô senza Euridice." from Willibald Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," is also a study in concentrated sadness, but of a more tragic design. Orfeo, or Orpheus, has braved the furies of hell to regain his wife Euridice, He is warned, however, that he must not look at her until they are safely outside the realm of death. Unable to resist Euridice's entreaties, he turns, gazes at her, and loses her a second time. He gives voice to his desperateness at facing life without her in this poignant aria.

(P) 1978 The Decca Record Comoany Ltd. ©1978 London Records
Marketed By London Records A Division of Polygram Classics, Inc.
137 W 55th Streel New York N Y 10019 Dislributed by Polygram Distribution, Inc.
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A STEREO RECORDING

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