Name: Luciano Pavarotti on Letterman, October 26, 1982
Uploaded: 2015-12-09T04:03:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Luciano Pavarotti on Letterman, October 26, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Luciano Pavarotti on Letterman, October 26, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-09. Transcript available.

We have a great show. Barbara Woodhouse is here and also my first guest, a
great opera singer who inspires the kind of fan enthusiasm usually reserved for
rock superstars. He is currently appearing at the Met here in New York City and
is also starring in the film Yes, Giorgio. Please welcome Luciano Pavarotti.
Very nice, very nice to meet you. You want to, before we get into this, and I
don't know what that means exactly, let's take a look at some of your film. We're
going to show a clip from your motion picture. Yes, Giorgio, have they told you
what this is, Luciano?
Yes.
Okay. Do you want to tell the rest of the folks what we're going to take a look
at here?
Are we taking a look first, and after you want me to say...
Let's take a look first, yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, what, do you know what part of the film we're going to see here?
I think so.
Okay.
So, we'll take a look at what I insist.
Well, I'm sorry, but you'll have to take no for an answer.
Mr. Feeney, excuse me, I, I'm Dr. Stuart Barman. What a thrill this is for me.
I'm going to see you tomorrow.
Then my friend convinced her she should do the same.
She fixed my throat, and now she refused to accept my invitation.
Pamela, this is the greatest singer in the world. You must go.
Opera puts me to sleep.
That is because you have never heard me sing. I challenge you to come tomorrow.
If you don't fall asleep during the concert, you must have supper with me.
And in the concert, I will sing an aria just for you.
Me and 150,000 other people.
No, for you alone. The aria is called Cielo e Mar.
That's my favorite.
And when I sing, Vieni o Donna, Vieni al bacio della vita.
Come, my beloved. Come to the kiss of life.
It will be just for you.
Vieni o Donna, Vieni al bacio della vita.
What is, generally, what is the plot there in the movie?
Well, the doctor, who is singing after me, is the real writer of the script,
who is inside the...
Who is Norman Steinberg.
Norman Steinberg, yeah.
He actually wrote the film.
And that is the most funny thing of all.
But he's even very, very funny.
He's very funny himself.
He's making many other movies.
And like you hear, I invite this girl to hear me to sing.
And she say, well, opera puts me to sleep.
And I say, no, because you did not hear myself.
Well, this kind of Italian approach, you know, you try to make.
And at the very end, it did work very well.
Now, this is about an opera star who is touring the United States, falls in
love with a throat doctor, right?
Well, yes, problem with a throat.
And the doctor who comes to see him is this fantastic girl.
Bingo.
Bingo.
Yeah.
Has that, anything like that ever happened in your life?
Not yet.
What was the purpose of you making a film?
Because you really, you don't really need to be making films now, do you?
That's absolutely true.
I don't need to make a film.
But MGM proposed me, I think, a very good subject with a great director, a very
beautiful script.
And we did make the movie.
And we hope it is going to have a success.
Of course, it's a kind of movie that is not one night explosion.
It's a movie that is going to stay a long time.
And we hope to have success.
Yeah.
You hope to attract more people to opera through the film?
That is the purpose.
If we don't do that, I think I fall, my intention, they fall.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're a tenor.
And I don't know what that means exactly.
It means high.
It means?
It means you go high with the voice.
Oh, I see.
Very high.
And you're, now that's anatomically not good for your voice, is it?
Anatomically, I think it's fantastic for the voice.
That's what I said.
It's one of the best things you can do for your voice.
Yes.
You don't need any extra help in terms of making higher the voice.
No.
The man voice, if is what you mean, if I understand your question correctly,
is then the man voice is a baritone voice, which is a little lower.
The tenor is more construct voice, is more sparkling.
And I think being a little constructed and unnatural and a little wild is even
the more interesting.
But the tenors are usually, and correct me if this is silly, but the star of
the opera, right?
Well, they say that they are generally the lover, the star of the opera is the
best who is singing that night, can be the baritone, can be the, generally it's
the lady, what you call prima donna, mean first lady.
The tenor, they always take the second step, but it doesn't matter sometimes,
like I say, it depends who is the singer and how you are singing in that
precise night.
The baritone can still be so very easy in ballo and masquerade if he's a great
baritone, even if the tenor is singing all the night long.
But you can't do it night after night, can you?
You've got to...
No, we do every three, four nights.
Yeah.
Okay, we're going to pause here.
We'll be right back to continue talking with Luciano Pavarotti.
Hi, welcome back.
Luciano Pavarotti is here, and tell me about some of the, how you have to
protect yourself, your voice, rather.
Well, when it's raining like today, for example, I always try to go out with a
taxi.
Of course, a lot of overcoat, but taxi at the door, door to the door.
I don't walk much.
Instead, when it's sunny, I walk, I take, I like to exercise and take more work.
But I think the most important thing is do not change temperature very quick.
Don't go from the heat of the theater immediately out in the cold of the winter.
Even vice versa, but it's the change of temperature.
Other way, I think it's very good to be a normal person.
How long does it take you to warm up?
To warm up for the performance of the night, generally I begin in the morning
around 11 o'clock.
If the voice is good, I don't care more until the night before the performance.
I sing the first area of the opera in my dressing room with the piano, and then
I go on the stage.
Other way, if I need, I even do three, four, five times.
Depends.
Well, now, you mentioned if the voice is good.
What would cause it to differ from morning to morning?
Well, I think we are never in the same way.
We are a human body, and the body is never in the same way.
Generally, a singer who makes a career is generally a very healthy person.
That's for sure.
Other way, we'll do another profession.
What do you do to warm up?
To warm up, I vocalize in the EY, you know, scale and arpeggio with the piano
and with the voice, of course.
Now, you couldn't do that here.
It was terrible, impossible today.
Yeah.
Very, you know, it doesn't make any effect, and I don't think it probably can
be a secret.
Somebody discovered some secret, or somebody can even discover some defect and
copy and have bad results.
I don't like.
And I guess there's no chance of you doing a number with the band.
Now, in a performance, if a tenor is singing the big one, the finale, would
that be?
I don't know how to describe it, but...
The aria.
The aria.
There you go.
And say the person, it all builds to one note, and say the person performing
misses the note or gets halfway there or something happens.
What can you do?
Because that's just left hanging out there.
The audience...
It can happen.
It can happen two or three times in your life career.
If it happens more than that, I think you're in danger.
Different business.
Yes, different business.
But if it would happen, is there such a thing as stopping the procedure and
going back?
Well, I think you realize before, and the audience realize before, that it's
going to happen.
Because if it's going to happen to somebody who is generally a good singer, it
means he feels sick from the beginning.
Either he announces or she announces, and then he's sick.
Either they don't, but still the audience understands, and you see then the
result, probably, at the highest note, who is more difficult than the other, is
a crack.
And then, let's say, American public will probably say a little of
disappointment.
Italian public will say something more, and a different reaction, absolutely
different reaction.
There was some kind of a fight broke out the other night here at the Met, wasn't
there?
Over something not unlike this?
People started swatting one another with programs and so forth?
Well, uh...
Which is a fight at the Met, by the way.
I guess that's as mad as it is.
It was a fire in the morning of...
Well, I'll tell you what.
We have to pause for station identification, and we'll pick this up when we
return.
We'll come back now with Luciano.
Thank you.
Welcome back to the show.
Ladies and gentlemen, Luciano Pavarotti is here.
Barbara Woodhouse will be joining us in a few moments.
Tomorrow night, presidential joke writers Vic Gold and Bob Orban will be here.
Singer slash comedian and widow of Ernie Kovacs, Edie Adams, will be here.
And the late night open tomorrow night.
Friday night, we'll be having our late night talent show featuring a talent
from right here in this building, NBC employees.
Not even competing for wonderful prizes, but just here having fun.
That'll be Friday night.
Do you want to finish up explaining what happened at the Met with the little swatting
episode and people booing and hissing and so forth?
I was not there, then.
I am not probably a very good judge.
I hear then a tenor cancel after the first act, and another substitute him, and
it seems that they did not like him.
No, they started hooting and booing.
And they fight, of course, and they use the program like, you know, like a duel.
Until the war is made with program, it's very good, I think.
It was always made.
But it was like a hockey fight there for a while.
I mean, you just, you don't think of trouble breaking out, you know.
You don't.
Like I say, I was not there.
I just hear people then report the thing to me.
And, of course, happening in the house, then I, of course, I consider my home,
the home of all the singers.
Not my private home, but the home of all the singers.
It's something who I don't like.
But in the meantime, I have to say, then it's part of the life of the theater.
To see people then, they are so alive and so, even a little over, over hot, I
would like to say.
So then you're suggesting that that's really not, while it doesn't happen every
night, it's not uncommon.
It's not uncommon, but it doesn't happen every night.
And that night particularly was, let's say, something very special.
Yeah.
In the bad way, of course.
They get the Guardian Angels now patrolling the aisles over there at the Mets.
It was interesting to read about it, though.
Yeah.
Something else interesting I was reading about this afternoon.
The size of a crowd that came to see you in Central Park one summer, one spring,
200,000 people?
I think so.
The park is capable of these.
And we were singing in Rigoletto there, and it was full.
And I will never forget that night, because for me, the pleasure is to sing for
more people than is possible.
And like I told you at the beginning of our talk, I make even this movie for
that reason, to give to everybody, to more people than is possible, the
opportunity to know the world of the opera.
Now, when I think of opera, I think of the United States and Europe.
Is it worldwide, the appeal?
I think, yes, certainly, yes.
Certainly.
The Orient?
Excuse me?
In Japan?
I think so, in Japan, too.
I think it's a movie who is classic in terms.
Then the last movie around about opera was made 30 and more years ago from
Mario Lanza, and even was not probably talking about the life of a singer.
And then it's something that is going to, we hope to stay a long time.
You're presently appearing at the Met.
What is the opera?
I am singing Idomeneo, who is my dream, because it's a Mozart, I adore Mozart,
and finally I sang this title role in this beautiful theater with incredible
equipment of, in any way, the conductor, the state director, the colleague, the
orchestra, the coro, and everybody.
It was an incredible night for an opera that was never done at the Met, in 100
years of history of the Met.
We did have the same applause that we have in Rigoletto and Bohem, and that is
really something that makes me feel that we have worked a lot for something.
If you're really familiar with an opera, if it's a part that you've performed
over and over again, some nights do you get in a silly mood and think, I'll
throw something in, or I'll goof around, or just a little trick here and there
for the people.
Well, I'm telling you, you don't have this feeling if you are not sick.
If you are sick, then you are...
Maybe that's my problem.
No, I'm sick, I mean really, hearing the truth.
Then you say, I'm going to goof around, like you say, I am going to save my
voice here to give more there and there and there.
Other way, I think when you go on the stage, there is something, I cannot
explain what it is, but it's something that is coming to you like an alp of
another soul.
Probably it is the soul of the character you are singing and playing on the
stage, and I don't think I give all myself, and I don't want to be melodramatic
just because I am a tenor, but I'm telling you, if I know I am going to die, I
say, don't push too much out of the way, you die.
If it's my destiny to die that night, I will.
I will never save, I will never goof around, like you say.
Pretty much so, it's all business.
I give myself, I give all myself.
It was a pleasure meeting you.
It was a great honor for me.
Continued success.
Luciano Pavarotti, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you, sir.
You are a fascinating gentleman, and you know, here on late night, we try to
have a lot of fun, and the good times don't have to involve celebrities,
elaborate props, or fancy video tricks.
You know, we can have fun the homespun way, and folks who watch the show
regularly know that there's nothing we like more here than an old-fashioned
sing.
So, tonight, in honor of our guest, signor Pavarotti, we thought we'd sing
along a classic Italian opera, the Anvil Chorus from Verde's Il Trovatore.
Now, if the studio audience will just watch the monitor and follow the bouncing
ball.
And we'll see you next time.
So, tonight, in honor of our guest, we will sing along a classic Italian opera,
and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic
Italian opera.
And we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic
Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera.
So, tonight, in honor of our guest, we'll sing along a classic Italian opera,
and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic
Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera.
So, tonight, in honor of our guest, we'll sing along a classic Italian opera,
and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic
Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing
along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera.
So, tonight, in honor of our guest, we'll sing along a classic Italian opera,
and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic
Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing
along a classic Italian opera.
A classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll
sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian
opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera.
A classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll
sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian
opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a
classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll
sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian
opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera.
A classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll
sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian
opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a
classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll
sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian
opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a
classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll
sing along a classic Italian opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian
opera, and we'll sing along a classic Italian opera.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Very nice, folks.
During that performance, no one was swatted with a program, ladies and
gentlemen.
Terribly moving.

Luciano Pavarotti on Letterman, October 26, 1982

We have a great show. Barbara Woodhouse is here and also my first guest, a
great opera singer who inspires the kind of fan enthusiasm usually reserved for
rock superstars. He is currently appearing at the Met here in New York City and
is also starring in the film Yes, Giorgio. Please welcome Luciano Pavarotti.
Very nice, very nice to meet you. You want to, before we get into this, and I
don't know what that means exactly, let's take a look at some of your film. We're
going to show a clip from your motion picture. Yes, Giorgio, have they told you
what this is, Luciano?
Yes.
Okay. Do you want to tell the rest of the folks what we're going to take a look
at here?
Are we taking a look first, and after you want me to say...
Let's take a look first, yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, what, do you know what part of the film we're going to see here?
I think so.
Okay.
So, we'll take a look at what I insist.
Well, I'm sorry, but you'll have to take no for an answer.
Mr. Feeney, excuse me, I, I'm Dr. Stuart Barman. What a thrill this is for me.
I'm going to see you tomorrow.
Then my friend convinced her she should do the same.
She fixed my throat, and now she refused to accept my invitation.
Pamela, this is the greatest singer in the world. You must go.
Opera puts me to sleep.
That is because you have never heard me sing. I challenge you to come tomorrow.
If you don't fall asleep during the concert, you must have supper with me.
And in the concert, I will sing an aria just for you.
Me and 150,000 other people.
No, for you alone. The aria is called Cielo e Mar.
That's my favorite.
And when I sing, Vieni o Donna, Vieni al bacio della vita.
Come, my beloved. Come to the kiss of life.
It will be just for you.
Vieni o Donna, Vieni al bacio della vita.
What is, generally, what is the plot there in the movie?
Well, the doctor, who is singing after me, is the real writer of the script,
who is inside the...
Who is Norman Steinberg.
Norman Steinberg, yeah.
He actually wrote the film.
And that is the most funny thing of all.
But he's even very, very funny.
He's very funny himself.
He's making many other movies.
And like you hear, I invite this girl to hear me to sing.
And she say, well, opera puts me to sleep.
And I say, no, because you did not hear myself.
Well, this kind of Italian approach, you know, you try to make.
And at the very end, it did work very well.
Now, this is about an opera star who is touring the United States, falls in
love with a throat doctor, right?
Well, yes, problem with a throat.
And the doctor who comes to see him is this fantastic girl.
Bingo.
Bingo.
Yeah.
Has that, anything like that ever happened in your life?
Not yet.
What was the purpose of you making a film?
Because you really, you don't really need to be making films now, do you?
That's absolutely true.
I don't need to make a film.
But MGM proposed me, I think, a very good subject with a great director, a very
beautiful script.
And we did make the movie.
And we hope it is going to have a success.
Of course, it's a kind of movie that is not one night explosion.
It's a movie that is going to stay a long time.
And we hope to have success.
Yeah.
You hope to attract more people to opera through the film?
That is the purpose.
If we don't do that, I think I fall, my intention, they fall.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're a tenor.
And I don't know what that means exactly.
It means high.
It means?
It means you go high with the voice.
Oh, I see.
Very high.
And you're, now that's anatomically not good for your voice, is it?
Anatomically, I think it's fantastic for the voice.
That's what I said.
It's one of the best things you can do for your voice.
Yes.
You don't need any extra help in terms of making higher the voice.
No.
The man voice, if is what you mean, if I understand your question correctly,
is then the man voice is a baritone voice, which is a little lower.
The tenor is more construct voice, is more sparkling.
And I think being a little constructed and unnatural and a little wild is even
the more interesting.
But the tenors are usually, and correct me if this is silly, but the star of
the opera, right?
Well, they say that they are generally the lover, the star of the opera is the
best who is singing that night, can be the baritone, can be the, generally it's
the lady, what you call prima donna, mean first lady.
The tenor, they always take the second step, but it doesn't matter sometimes,
like I say, it depends who is the singer and how you are singing in that
precise night.
The baritone can still be so very easy in ballo and masquerade if he's a great
baritone, even if the tenor is singing all the night long.
But you can't do it night after night, can you?
You've got to...
No, we do every three, four nights.
Yeah.
Okay, we're going to pause here.
We'll be right back to continue talking with Luciano Pavarotti.
Hi, welcome back.
Luciano Pavarotti is here, and tell me about some of the, how you have to
protect yourself, your voice, rather.
Well, when it's raining like today, for example, I always try to go out with a
taxi.
Of course, a lot of overcoat, but taxi at the door, door to the door.
I don't walk much.
Instead, when it's sunny, I walk, I take, I like to exercise and take more work.
But I think the most important thing is do not change temperature very quick.
Don't go from the heat of the theater immediately out in the cold of the winter.
Even vice versa, but it's the change of temperature.
Other way, I think it's very good to be a normal person.
How long does it take you to warm up?
To warm up for the performance of the night, generally I begin in the morning
around 11 o'clock.
If the voice is good, I don't care more until the night before the performance.
I sing the first area of the opera in my dressing room with the piano, and then
I go on the stage.
Other way, if I need, I even do three, four, five times.
Depends.
Well, now, you mentioned if the voice is good.
What would cause it to differ from morning to morning?
Well, I think we are never in the same way.
We are a human body, and the body is never in the same way.
Generally, a singer who makes a career is generally a very healthy person.
That's for sure.
Other way, we'll do another profession.
What do you do to warm up?
To warm up, I vocalize in the EY, you know, scale and arpeggio with the piano
and with the voice, of course.
Now, you couldn't do that here.
It was terrible, impossible today.
Yeah.
Very, you know, it doesn't make any effect, and I don't think it probably can
be a secret.
Somebody discovered some secret, or somebody can even discover some defect and
copy and have bad results.
I don't like.
And I guess there's no chance of you doing a number with the band.
Now, in a performance, if a tenor is singing the big one, the finale, would
that be?
I don't know how to describe it, but...
The aria.
The aria.
There you go.
And say the person, it all builds to one note, and say the person performing
misses the note or gets halfway there or something happens.
What can you do?
Because that's just left hanging out there.
The audience...
It can happen.
It can happen two or three times in your life career.
If it happens more than that, I think you're in danger.
Different business.
Yes, different business.
But if it would happen, is there such a thing as stopping the procedure and
going back?
Well, I think you realize before, and the audience realize before, that it's
going to happen.
Because if it's going to happen to somebody who is generally a good singer, it
means he feels sick from the beginning.
Either he announces or she announces, and then he's sick.
Either they don't, but still the audience understands, and you see then the
result, probably, at the highest note, who is more difficult than the other, is
a crack.
And then, let's say, American public will probably say a little of
disappointment.
Italian public will say something more, and a different reaction, absolutely
different reaction.
There was some kind of a fight broke out the other night here at the Met, wasn't
there?
Over something not unlike this?
People started swatting one another with programs and so forth?
Well, uh...
Which is a fight at the Met, by the way.
I guess that's as mad as it is.
It was a fire in the morning of...
Well, I'll tell you what.
We have to pause for station identification, and we'll pick this up when we
return.
We'll come back now with Luciano.
Thank you.
Welcome back to the show.
Ladies and gentlemen, Luciano Pavarotti is here.
Barbara Woodhouse will be joining us in a few moments.
Tomorrow night, presidential joke writers Vic Gold and Bob Orban will be here.
Singer slash comedian and widow of Ernie Kovacs, Edie Adams, will be here.
And the late night open tomorrow night.
Friday night, we'll be having our late night talent show featuring a talent
from right here in this building, NBC employees.
Not even competing for wonderful prizes, but just here having fun.
That'll be Friday night.
Do you want to finish up explaining what happened at the Met with the little swatting
episode and people booing and hissing and so forth?
I was not there, then.
I am not probably a very good judge.
I hear then a tenor cancel after the first act, and another substitute him, and
it seems that they did not like him.
No, they started hooting and booing.
And they fight, of course, and they use the program like, you know, like a duel.
Until the war is made with program, it's very good, I think.
It was always made.
But it was like a hockey fight there for a while.
I mean, you just, you don't think of trouble breaking out, you know.
You don't.
Like I say, I was not there.
I just hear people then report the thing to me.
And, of course, happening in the house, then I, of course, I consider my home,
the home of all the singers.
Not my private home, but the home of all the singers.
It's something who I don't like.
But in the meantime, I have to say, then it's part of the life of the theater.
To see people then, they are so alive and so, even a little over, over hot, I
would like to say.
So then you're suggesting that that's really not, while it doesn't happen every
night, it's not uncommon.
It's not uncommon, but it doesn't happen every night.
And that night particularly was, let's say, something very special.
Yeah.
In the bad way, of course.
They get the Guardian Angels now patrolling the aisles over there at the Mets.
It was interesting to read about it, though.
Yeah.
Something else interesting I was reading about this afternoon.
The size of a crowd that came to see you in Central Park one summer, one spring,
200,000 people?
I think so.
The park is capable of these.
And we were singing in Rigoletto there, and it was full.
And I will never forget that night, because for me, the pleasure is to sing for
more people than is possible.
And like I told you at the beginning of our talk, I make even this movie for
that reason, to give to everybody, to more people than is possible, the
opportunity to know the world of the opera.
Now, when I think of opera, I think of the United States and Europe.
Is it worldwide, the appeal?
I think, yes, certainly, yes.
Certainly.
The Orient?
Excuse me?
In Japan?
I think so, in Japan, too.
I think it's a movie who is classic in terms.
Then the last movie around about opera was made 30 and more years ago from
Mario Lanza, and even was not probably talking about the life of a singer.
And then it's something that is going to, we hope to stay a long time.
You're presently appearing at the Met.
What is the opera?
I am singing Idomeneo, who is my dream, because it's a Mozart, I adore Mozart,
and finally I sang this title role in this beautiful theater with incredible
equipment of, in any way, the conductor, the state director, the colleague, the
orchestra, the coro, and everybody.
It was an incredible night for an opera that was never done at the Met, in 100
years of history of the Met.
We did have the same applause that we have in Rigoletto and Bohem, and that is
really something that makes m