Outsize Chairs and Appetite for Apple Crumble

Inevitably it was the prosciutto that José Carreras recalled and the handful of apple crumble that stuck in producer Harvey Goldsmith's mind yesterday, as much as the velvet voice.

Stories abound of Luciano Pavarotti as a larger than life character, a man with a gargantuan appetite for food and fun, who traveled with saucepans and olive oil in his luggage, who cooked pasta for some such as the conductor Sir George Solti, but kept other dignitaries waiting as he cooked lunch for himself.

The Spanish tenor, whose performances with Pavarotti and Placido Domingo as the Three Tenors sold 10m records, yesterday recalled for a Swedish newspaper a shared love of poker - and food.

"I remember that the last time I was visiting him in his town in Modena, at his home, he was preparing some special bread and tomato for me, together with prosciutto. He was entertaining also in the gastronomic aspect that he liked very much," he said.

Impresario Raymond Gubbay remembered a masterclass he staged at the Barbican in the mid-80s. "He was big even then, and we'd been warned we had to find him something suitable to sit on, so we'd rushed around hiring this extraordinary collection of thrones and enormous chairs. He walked in and saw them all lined up, laughed uproariously, took out of his holdall a little folding stool, and that was all he used: he never even sat on one of our chairs."

Harvey Goldsmith, the producer who took him out of the classical music circuit and into arena and open air concerts, said: "He was one of a kind. He was great company, very entertaining, always a twinkle in his eye.

"There was a reception afterwards with a buffet, and as one man had just got his apple crumble and cream dessert, he saw that Pavarotti was about to leave, and rushed over to shake his hand.

"Pavarotti did shake hands but with his free hand he scooped a great handful up of the dessert and ate it. The man was completely overcome, he had shaken hands and his hero had eaten his apple crumble - it was a real double whammy."

Pavarotti's last appearance in London was at Covent Garden in January 2002 in Tosca. "I looked at him sitting on a stool in our rehearsal room, just perched on the edge of it, scarf around his neck, and to me he seemed much quieter, and not nearly as large as I had expected - but then when you saw him on stage he was just immense," said Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera.

A superstar is born

On February 17 1972 Pavarotti's show-stopping performance in Donizetti's La Fille Du Regiment, made him into a superstar. Here are extracts from an interview with the New York Times carried out the day after his triumph

Luciano Pavarotti, who burst into opera superstardom on Thursday night with the spectacularly and force of a supernova, was so ecstatic yesterday that he could scarcely sit still for an interview.

'You can't imagine the thrill,' the 36-year-old tenor exclaimed ... He was alluding to the show-stopping bravos and huzzas for his Tonio in Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera, as well as to the 12 prolonged curtain calls that he was accorded by 3,788 persons who thronged the first performance of the opera here in 30 years.

'I think I did so well because the role of Tonio fits my personality,' Mr Pavarotti said, not immodestly. 'I am a serious person, and the music is a serious challenge; but I like to be happy and Tonio is a happy person.'

Just why he clicked in New York, he does not know. 'Perhaps it's the audience, perhaps it's the aura of the Met, perhaps because we've been rehearsing for two weeks - I really haven't any idea,' Mr Pavarotti said.