Luciano Pavarotti, perhaps the world’s most famous opera singer, has had surgery for pancreatic cancer. Pavarotti Battling Pancreatic Cancer The five year survival rate for this type of cancer is low.
"Fortunately, the mass was able to be completely removed at surgery," the singer’s manager, Terri Robson, said in a statement from her London office. "Mr. Pavarotti is recovering well, and his physicians are encouraged by the physical and emotional resilience of their patient."
Pavarotti, 70, had intended the 2005-06 season to be a "Worldwide Farewell Tour," but he was forced to cancel eight concerts in April and another five in June, citing what was described as "complications from back surgery." (He had been scheduled to sing in Washington at Verizon Center on June 21.) The latest round of concerts would have taken him to Great Britain and, in September, he was slated to sing in Finland, Norway, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal. …
Even well past his 60th birthday, he retained the most sheerly beautiful tenor voice since that of the late Jussi Bjoerling, who died in 1960. And on those occasions when Pavarotti threw himself wholeheartedly into a role — knowing every note, thinking about the music, attending all the rehearsals, working closely and sympathetically with his colleagues, shepherding his resources for the long haul — there was nobody else like him. And only Pavarotti had that sound — that honeyed, lambent, never-to-be-forgotten sound .
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