Royal couple join thousands of fans who brave torrential rain to celebrate the tenor's 30 years in opera
THE gulf between I Can't Get No Satisfaction and None Shall Sleep was bridged under grey skies and pouring rain last night in Hyde Park. An audience put at more than 100,000 stood in the rain for a free concert by the tenor extraordinary, Luciano Pavarotti, to celebrate his 30 years in opera.
Not since the flower-power summer of 1969, when that earlier vocal hero, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones sang for 75,000 young people, some high on illegal substances, had there been such a brouhaha for a free concert.
But while it was hot for the Stones, the weather turned against Pavarotti with almost operatic vengeance. As Verdi's overture to Louisa Miller burst from the hideous brick-red imitation of a Greek classical theatre, the rain, hitherto a mere supporting player, burst from the heavens.
As umbrellas went up in the enclosed area where freedom stopped and patrons were paying from pounds 150 to pounds 300 for a seat, there were cries of: 'Put them down,' and 'Selfish bitch.' For the next 90 minutes the umbrellas were up and down like yo-yos - but most of the rich were willing to be soaked for Pavarotti 's sake.
Out in the packed open area, the unpaying majority had rougher manners. Cola tins and plastic bottles were hurled at those daring enough to hold their umbrellas high. It was hard for them, separated from the fee payers in the enclosure, to see the three giant screens relaying the Sky broadcast, let alone the stage.
'I think I saw a spot in the distance that was Pavarotti,' Thomas William Powlett, from London, said. Others were more easily satisfied. Hero worship was the mood of the evening and sang-froid the style.
'Just to listen to him is enough. I came for the voice,' said Peter Kent, from London. 'We're just here for a night out,' said a young man from Leatherhead with his girlfriend. 'Sally bought me a CD of Pavarotti. It made me feel flaked out and really relaxed. It's the atmosphere and the voice which matters.'
In 1969 the crowd was hip and young with girls in see-through dresses, the scent of joss-sticks and marijuana in the air, while Jagger, true to the new permissive society, sported a shocking white mini-dress.
Last night it was respectability from start to finish. Suits and expensive dresses in the enclosure, the unexceptionable elsewhere.
Harvey Goldsmith set a seal of entrepreneurial vitality on the occasion, which sharply distinguished it from the free-for-all of 1969. Vans, stalls and caravans offered official food and merchandise - T-shirts, key rings and sweatshirts.
To the neutral eye, as opposed to the enthralled ear, Pavarotti offered not all that much to set the pulse racing. He stood in his full evening dress, a bearded figure, plump to the point of portliness, clutching a huge handkerchief in one hand as if it were a prop and keeping the other almost entirely still. His voice alone did all the remarkable acting.
As the last triumphant notes rang out from the aria which Pavarotti gave to the World Cup, Puccini's Nessun Dorma from Turandot, the audience rose in the rain to cheer him to the echo. Prince Charles and Princess Diana were for once very much extras in someone else's great show.
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