ENCORE! These 3 reign as tenors of the times
This was a happy time in my life I share this memory with you! They came. They sang. They conquered.

Before 56,000 semi-deliriousfans Saturday night at Dodger Stadium, and a global TV audience of more than one billion, "Encore! The Three Tenors" flaunted the extravagant appeal of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. Part pop-schlock spectacle, part highbrow sensation and all marketing bonanza, the nearly three-hourevent was the sequel to the singers' 1990 songfest in Rome's Baths of Caracalla,held on the eve of the World Cup soccer final. Saturday's concert also proceeded soccer championship, but the only scores that mattered were musical.

Featuring songs, arias, groupmedleys and 10 -- count 'em, 10 -- encores, the performance backed by Zubin Mehta, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Music Center Opera Choruswas a multimillion-dollar exercise in glorious excess. All three tenors were clearly heard, thanks to mega-amplification. All were in fine voice, thoughDomingo had the edge in dramatic fervor and lustrous brio.

"Encore! The Three Tenors"was not so much competitive one-upmanship as musical buddy-bonding -- an all-star triple header, with the heads belonging to the globe's most famous operatic threesome. The singers even joked about the fabled rivalries. In the well-rehearsed "O Sole Mio" encore, Pavarotti inserted a blatantly showy trill as Domingo and Carreras scoffed at such grandstanding. When Domingo and Carreras then began trilling, it was Pavarotti's turn to feign indignation.

Such antics were much appreciatedby an audience that paid up to $1,000 per ticket. Among the attendees wereAl Gore, George and Barbara Bush, Itzhak Perlman, Whoopi Goldberg and ArnoldSchwarzenegger plus nearly 200 San Diego Opera patrons who traveled by charteredbus. After Carreras' heavily accented rendition of "My Way," Frank Sinatrastood and applauded from the audience, and the three tenors clapped back.Following "Singin' in the Rain," a frail-looking Gene Kelly was helped tohis feet for a brief salute.

Ah, LA.

Only in La-La Land would a concert stage in a baseball outfield sport "Ben Hur"-style columns and towering waterfalls (turned off during the singing). Only here would a jungle backdrop resemble a set from "Jurassic Park." There was no need for rampaging T-Rexes,however, since the three T's were musically voracious, devouring tune aftertune. And, as with Stephen Spielberg's movie, their event is a monster moneymaker.

Beyond the glossy, $10 program booklets and $60 sweat shirts are the records and videos, which will be stockedin stores as early as Aug. 30. Since the Rome recording has become the best-sellingclassical album of all time, with around 10 million copies sold, the new record deal will earn them more -- an estimated $1 million each. No wonderthey looked so happy Saturday.

Domingo -- a champion people-pleaser,like Pavarotti -- savored the sultry fun of the rapturously received "Granada."The newly appointed head of Washington Opera also sustained admirably strong-yet-sweettones in Torroba's "Amor, vida de mi vida," and revealed both anger and heartachein Leoncavallo's celebrated "Vesti la giubba." Accompanied by his familiar,tablecloth-sized white hanky, Pavarotti wore his popularity like a crown.Never mind that the voice sometimes sounded a bit reedy and strained. Thelegendary clarity, breath control and easily attained upper register wereevident in everything from Schubert's "Ave Maria" to Verdi's "Brindisi" and"La donna e mobile." So nonchalant was Pavarotti that he chewed gum. Butapparently, he didn't spend as much time as his compadres learning the wordsto standards like "Moon River." Then again, why bother when the score's rightthere on the music stand?

Carreras, meanwhile, capitalizedon force, passion and agility in the works of composers ranging from Puccinito Rodgers and Hart. Though his voice sounded a mite dry, and his vibratowas wide enough to drive a truck through, there was no shortage of verve.His fortissimo could better be described as blastissimo. The tenors convergedfor lengthy "Hollywood" and "Around the World" medleys which Mehta conducted with energetic flamboyance. When the encores began including repeats of worksheard earlier, one began to wonder whether they'd do the whole program again.

But the concert finally ended with their 1990 hit, Puccini's "Nessun dorma." The climactic phrase "All'albavincero" ("At dawn I shall win") provided a stirring call to victory. Andthe prolonged cheers showed that, once again, the three T's were triumphant.





The Three Tenors"-- mega-musicale by Pavarotti , Domingo & Carreras Bellissimo!
'The Three Tenors' made lasting impressions worthy of an encore


"Encore! The Three Tenors"-- July 16's mega-musicale by Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium -- is history.

Gone are the stage's quasi-Greciancolumns imported from Hungary, gone the whooshing, 48-foot-tall waterfallsand jungle panorama reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park." Goneare the 56,000 patrons wearing everything from shorts to sequins, roaringtheir approval while sampling stadium delicacies like Dodger Dogs and champagne.

Gone are the traffic snarlsand teeming elevators. The TV cameras and Hollywood celebrities. The USCMarching Band and Trojan cheerleaders. Gone, too, the craning and strainingto experience what concert promoter Tibor Rudas modestly called "one of thelandmark events marking the close of the 20th century." As Bob Hope mightsay -- he was, after all, on the guest list -- "thanks for the memories."

Here, then, are memories, observations, questions and conundrums from this observers tattered notebook.

Was Luciano Pavarotti really chewing gum?

It certainly looked that waybefore intermission. The free minibinoculars handed out at the concert weren'tmuch help in determining the Glorious One's jaw movements. They had two settings:blurry and less blurry. But the giant video screen to the side of the stage-- and the PBS telecasts seen in San Diego -- showed Luciano chomping duringthe "Singin' in the Rain" segment. Though some fans were aghast, callingthis critic with can't-believe-my-eyes comments, the chewing may not merelybe a case of jaunty nonchalance.

At 58, the globe's most popular tenor needs to keep his aging vocal cords moist. Gum-chewing might be the way.

What happened to the rest of the telecast?

Fans at home didn't witnessthe entire Dodger Stadium program, which lasted nearly three hours and contained10 encores. The concert's final 12-minute portion -- a repeat of the "HollywoodMedley" heard earlier, plus an extra rendition of Puccini's "Nessun dorma"-- reportedly never made it onto the international satellite feed.

The story is, it took so longfor the tenors and conductor Zubin Mehta to return to the stage for theirfarewell offering that broadcast officials assumed the concert was over.The finale was apparently presented at the behest of recording engineers,who wanted a "take two." According to Rich Capparela, a National Public Radiointermission commentator: "All the satellites I know of had shut down, includingNPR. They were told it was over, the credits started to roll, and everyoneshut down their gear. Then the tenors came back out, unseen by everyone exceptthose in Dodger Stadium."

Some home viewers became iratewhen they learned what had been missed. "We got a lot of calls from viewersyelling `You cut it off!' " reports Brett Kelly, director of fund-raisingfor KPBS-TV, Channel 15. "We told them it wasn't our fault. There was nothingwe could do. The screen went black on us from LA. There was no more livefeed."

How much did the broadcast make for participating PBS stations?

Lots. LA's KCET is countingapproximately $500,000 from fund-raising telecasts. And in two four-hourperiods on July 16 and 17, San Diego's KPBS-TV raised more than $215,000from 1,700 callers. Additional donations will roll in Aug. 21 at 7 p.m.,when the station shows "Encore! The Three Tenors" during another pledge drive.

Not everyone is thrilled, however,by using the concert as a shill-athon. This critic fielded calls from disgruntledopera fans who complained about KPBS' teasing technique on July 17, whenthe taped performance was interrupted by numerous pledge requests.





What it was like ... being there. Exciting. Exhausting. Confusing. Cathartic.
What it was like being there.

Exciting. Exhausting. Confusing. Cathartic.

In a strange turn of faultycrowd control, not all of Dodger Stadium's escalators were running. In orderto get from field level seats to parking on level seven -- the stadium'sbuilt on a canyon -- you had to schlepp up stairs or pack into elevators.Confusion was built into the program. Though the glossy, $10 booklets soldas fast as vendors could rip them out of cardboard boxes, they didn't listall the selections correctly. That was obvious soon after the concert started,when Domingo and Pavarotti substituted other arias for those listed. No announcementswere made. Photocopies of the revised song list could be found at the fifthlevel press box, a bustling haven for media types in need of informationand a free can of cold pop.

Itzhak Perlman, virtuoso violinistturned PBS commentator, roamed the hallway in a wheelchair. Foreign operacorrespondents yakked on phones in a variety of languages. The rows of tablesthat normally held sports reporters were filled with arts types, coveringthe biggest musical game in town.

How was the audience?

So enormous that only a handfulof the most expensive tickets, costing $1,000 each, were left at concerttime. Urging people to take their seats, a voice on the public address systemannounced that "tonight's broadcast will be broadcast to over 100 countries-- and every one of them expects it to start on time!" It did. But therewas milling and talking through "The Star-Spangled Banner." And more talkingthrough Bernstein's "Candide" Overture, zestily performed by Mehta and theLos Angeles Philharmonic.

For many in the audience, thehyper-amplified performance didn't really start until the first tenor --Carreras -- appeared on stage. In this program preceding the World Cup soccermatch, the three T's were all that mattered. Domingo sounded the best, robustand vibrant. Ensemble numbers were often so accessible that they seemed surreal,as with the bopping, beaming rendition of "Brazil" or the clap-happy versionof "Funiculi Funicula." Carreras got the biggest laugh during the encoreof "My Way," when the appreciative if weary crowd heard him sing "And now,the end is near..."

Actually, it was just the beginning.

The 75-minute compact discwill be released at the end of next month, with Atlantic Records hoping totop the tenors' best-selling 1990 album from Rome. The video -- on laserdisc and VHS -- is also due by Aug. 30. And a $50 coffee-table book willbe ready in fall. Oh goody. In time for Christmas.

To the three tenors: Thanks for the memory


It was a great show, agrand event, a spectacle to fit warmly in our musical memories. And a weekand a half later, my thoughts still return to the way it was that gloriousSaturday night in Dodger Stadium when the Three Tenors came to town: PlacidoDomingo, Jose Carreras and the one singer in the threesome who looks exactlythe way he sounds -- the indomitable Luciano Pavarotti.

I loved every minute of it.

As I watched this extraordinarysongfest unfold on KPBS-TV (actually I saw both the live telecast and therepeat Sunday), I couldn't help thinking that the evening would be completeonly if Tommy Lasorda had stayed in Los Angeles and joined the tenors onstage for some barbershop harmonizing. And brought Fernando Valenzuela withhim.

Can you picture it? The placewould have gone bonkers. But when you put on a show of such magnitude, youcannot think of everything.

I asked a friend of mine, arespected opera buff, for his views on an event that struck me as the epitomeof showmanship. "They sang a few good arias," he said, "but I turned it offwhen they went into the Hollywood hokum." Such is the way of the world: Oneman's showmanship is another man's Hollywood hokum, and there you are. Andthen this fellow, the opera buff, said: "I would rather have heard a completeopera."

A gathering of the giants

No reflection on the boostersfor Verdi and Puccini, but a complete opera would hardly have filled thebill here, for this was a show with its own set of ground rules. This wasa gathering of the giants, at once competitive and collegial. This was BabeRuth, Ty Cobb and Ted Williams taking turns in the batting cage. This wasJoe Namath, Bart Starr and Sammy Baugh throwing passes to Lance Alworth,Raymond Berry and Don Hutson. This was Babe Didrikson, Mickey Wright andNancy Lopez at the practice tee. This was Laurence Olivier, John Barrymoreand Alec Guinness, reciting their lines. This was Billie Holiday, Peggy Leeand Ella Fitzgerald comparing musical notes. This was Picasso, Matisse andCezanne painting colors on a canvas. This was Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertsonand Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shooting baskets.

I believe I have made my point.

And this, it should be noted,was not the Met, and it was not La Scala -- this was Dodger Stadium. Andthe 50,000 spectators were not assembled for a concert -- they shelled outhefty coin of the realm to see a musical show. And so I ask: Where is itengrained in marble that operatic tenors cannot warble "My Way," with FrankSinatra in the audience? Or "Singin' in the Rain" on behalf of Gene Kelly?

As you may have observed, Boband Dolores Hope were there, too, in the audience, and, accordingly, if Imay second-guess the producer of the show, the three tenors should have respondedwith the Hope theme, "Thanks for the Memory."

Pavarotti, who ranks as BobHope's favorite classical singer, could have followed with the tune thatBob introduced long ago on the Broadway stage: "I Can't Get Started." Youdon't think that would have brought the house down?

Zubin's peculiar gymnastics

And now a word about ZubinMehta, who conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic and engaged in his ownpeculiar gymnastics. Watching Mehta, I recalled a line once uttered by ErnieByfield, who ran the storied Pump Room at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago.Since the late 1930s, the Pump Room has won acclaim as a mecca for celebrities.

For years Byfield's waiterswould scurry about serving shish kebab on 3-foot swords with a can of Sternoconcealed at the base of the sword to create huge flames. This became a trademarkof the Pump Room, the shish kebabs and all those flames. Byfield said: "Thecustomers like it and it doesn't seem to hurt the food." And so it is, Iguess, with Zubin Mehta's overheated gestures -- the customers like it andit doesn't seem to hurt the music.

David Levi Worldwide Entertainment Networks INC. Beverly Hills, California USA 90210

"Encore! The Three Tenors" by David Harrison Levi