Luciano Pavarotti Has Passed Away

According to the AP, he'd been suffering with pancreatic cancer for sometime.

And this, according to the same AP story, was his final public performance:

Fitting that it was Nessun Dorma from Turandot.

My mother is a HUGE Pavarotti fan and so I am sure the news will bring more than a few tears to her old Italian eyes. Every Christmas she got from one of us the latest Pavarotti LP if there was one. Or perhaps an older recording that didn't yet have. Or a book about him. Or a poster. Sundays (and many Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, you ge the picture) the house, to my utter teenage embarrassment, was filled with that voice. The larger than life Modenesi (sp?) tenor voice that my mother adored. This is like losing a long time family friend.

Domingo? Carreras? Both immensely talented, my mother would say, but neither could sing quite like Pavarotti.

Sorry for your loss, mom. I really am.