Superstar tenor Pavarotti dies at 71

Legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose titanic voice and charisma brought opera to the masses, died of cancer on Thursday aged 71. "There were tenors, and then there was Pavarotti," said Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli.
His health had been failing for a year, but the death of the bearded tenor, known as "Big Luciano" because of his 127 kg (280 lb) bulk, saddened everyone from impresarios and critics to fans who could barely afford tickets.
While past opera greats often locked themselves in a gilded, elitist world, television viewers around the world heard Pavarotti sing with pop stars like Sting and Bono in his "Pavarotti and Friends" benefit concerts.
"Some can sing opera; Luciano Pavarotti WAS an opera," Bono said on his Web site. "I spoke to him last week ... the voice that was louder than any rock band was a whisper."
London's Royal Opera House at Covent Garden said: "He introduced the extraordinary power of opera to people who perhaps would never have encountered opera and classical singing. In doing so, he enriched their lives. That will be his legacy." Vienna's Staatsoper flew a black flag.
Sales of opera albums shot up after the concert. The aria "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot", which has the famous line "At dawn I will be victorious", became as familiar to soccer fans as the usual stadium chants.
At the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London, the band played Nessun Dorma. US President George W. Bush called him a "great humanitarian" who used his great talent to help the needy.
Pavarotti's father was a baker who liked to sing and his mother worked in a cigar factory. The people of Modena, a town in northeast Italy, mourned a man who remained attached to his hometown even as a superstar. His body will lie in state in Modena cathedral from late Thursday until a funeral on Saturday at 3 pm (1300 GMT).
In 2003, Pavarotti married Nicoletta Mantovani, an assistant 34 years his junior and younger than his three daughters, after an acrimonious divorce from Adua, his wife of 37 years. As Nicoletta was bearing twins, the pregnancy ran into complications and their son Riccardo was stillborn. Their surviving daughter Alice is now four years old.