Playboy Interview: Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti was late. He was supposed to attend a friend's song recital at the Bank of America building in San Francisco. He flagged a taxi, telling the driver to take him to the Bank of America and hurry. ''Which one?'' the driver asked. ''How should I know?'' Pavarotti replied. ''The biggest.'' The driver found the right building. Pavarotti reached into his pocket, pulling out a wad of crushed tissues and three $100 bills. ''Please,'' the driver said, ''this one is on me. It's my pleasure.'' Inside the building, Pavarotti looked in vain for a sign to indicate where an auditorium might be. When an elevator discharged a few dozen people, Pavarotti grabbed the first, businessman he saw. ''Where's the recital?'' he asked fervently. The startled young man looked at the large, recognizable Italian whose face had appeared in the newspapers and on TV all week and smiled nervously. ''Anywhere you want it,'' he said.

Indeed, it often seems as if all Pavarotti has to do to have the world listen gratefully is open his mouth. Conductor Richard Bonynge calls his voice ''the kind that appears once every 100 years,'' and it has been heard in opera houses throughout Europe, the U.S., Australia, South America, Japan and Russia. His more than 20 albums are among the best selling of any living tenor's and his authorized biography was a recent best seller. His concerts, like the operas in which he appears, are sold out months in advance, and tickets are often sold by scalpers at premium prices (for his premiere of ''Aïda'' in San Francisco, front-row tickets were reportedly selling for $1200 a pair). He sang for the Pope when they both happened to be in Chicago at the same time, and he received a standing ovation when he sang at the 1981 Academy Awards show. His face is familiar enough to be featured in the Blackglama Furs ''What Becomes a Legend Most?'' ad campaign, as well as in the American Express commercial.

In 1980, he was named New York's grand marshal of the Columbus Day parade and was the only such designee to ride a horse down Fifth Avenue. He has appeared before nearly 150,000 people at a concert in New York's Central Park, has raised money for Italian earthquake victims by doing a benefit recital at San Francisco's Civic Auditorium and has sung with Frank Sinatra at a fund raiser for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute cancer center. The recipient of more than 50,000 letters a year from fans around the world, he employs six people to make sure they are all answered. And he never turns down a request for an autograph, a picture or a kiss.

Born on October 12,1935, in Modena, a small city in northern Italy, he grew up in an extended complex of 16 families, often pampered by his neighbors and his relatives because he was the only boy among the more than 100 people to who treated him as a son or a brother. His father, an amateur tenor who made his living as a baker, took him to sing in the church choir but discouraged him from turning professional. His mother, who worked in a cigar factory, encouraged him to consider singing.

At 12, he was taken by his father to hear Beniamino Gigli, the leading Italian tenor, and he knew from then on what he'd like to be when he grew up. But the decision to become a singer wasn't an immediate one. He taught grade school for two years, sold insurance to his students' families and, with a friend, decided to go to Rome to study mathematics. His friend changed his mind about the academic life, and his family finally agreed he could study singing in Modena with a local tenor named Arrigo Pola. It was the beginning of a six-and-half-year apprenticeship, first with Pola and then with Maestro Ettore Campogalliani. When he was 24, he developed a nodule on his vocal cords, and for almost a year he sounded like a baritone. But when the nodule calcified, his lyrical tenor voice returned, sweeter than it had ever been. At 26, he won a singing competition and the prize was an appearance as Rodolfo in Puccini's ''La Bohème,'' a role that would mark his debuts at London's Covent Garden two years later, in 1963; at Milan's La Scala in 1966; and at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1968. It marked the beginning of his professional career.

Soprano Joan Sutherland played a significant role in Pavarotti's career when, after her husband, Richard Bonynge, had heard him sing at Covent Garden in 1963, she and Bonynge signed him to tour Australia with them in 1965. Pavarotti was 30 then, and he credits Sutherland with teaching him how to breathe correctly while singing. He recalls that Australian tour with her as having been significant in another way as well: ''Nobody came to me for an interview. They went to her because she was famous. I was not famous. It didn't mean that I wasn't good but that I had to be better and older and more known and more famous if I wanted the respect.''

It didn't take long before the press discovered him. And Pavarotti was very obliging. In fact, he seemed to revel in the attention, telling reporters that applause was his oxygen. His gregarious personality won them over, and he eventually became a media phenomenon, appearing on the covers of Newsweek and Time as well as dozens of other national and international magazines. He also used the far-reaching potential of television, appearing on many of the talk shows (even discussing the size of a woman's breasts on ''The Tonight Show,'' which had to be censored when Pavarotti inadvertently used the word tits), conducting lessons for young singers on the Public Broadcasting Service, appearing live from the Met and from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Montreal for a Christmas special. Most recently, attempting to capitalize on his wide appeal and popularity, MGM invested $15,000,000 in a light romantic comedy, ''Yes, Giorgio,'' about an Italian tenor who has voice problems and winds up having an affair with his pretty throat doctor.

To find out more about him, Playboy sent Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel (whose last ''Playboy Interview'' was with Patty Hearst, in March 1982) to travel with him over a four-month period. Grobel's report:

''We began this interview on the MGM lot in Culver City, where I first saw the Pavarotti charisma. For a week, I visited the set every day, watching as such people as Itzhak Perlman, Jacqueline Bisset and Charlton Heston came by just to see the great tenor mouthing the words to a prerecorded 'Nessun Dorma.' While he took moviemaking seriously, he also considered it something of a vacation from real work.

''In Chicago, where I next saw him, he was more in his element, appearing at the Lyric Opera, staying after each performance to meet with and sign autographs for every fan who had waited for him, auditioning young singers in his hotel room. To one 21-year-old tenor who sang for him, he said, 'Your problem is you don't sweat enough. If you do not sweat, you aren't working hard.'

''Back in California, a couple of days after his debut in 'Aïda,' he was feeling buoyant, expansive. We went to an afternoon recital, then for a meal in Chinatown, and even rode a cable car back to his hotel. When the conductor of the cable car saw who was standing on the crowded platform, he came to a screeching hall in the middle of an intersection and insisted on having his picture taken with the famous tenor. 'Hey! My man!' he kept shouting. 'My man!'

''The same enthusiasm surrounded Pavarotti wherever he went. At a tennis club, six TV cameras and dozens of reporters waited for him; on a street corner, businessmen had him sign their copies of The Wall Street Journal. Of all the celebrities I have interviewed, no other has received such an outpouring of love and affection from such a diverse group of fans. Women in ermine stood next to teenagers in jeans, waiting for their programs to be signed. One woman, a chicken farmer who had named her favorite stud rooster after him, follows Pavarotti around the country, making sure someone snaps a Polaroid of them to add to her collection.

''In New York, where we wound up our marathon talks, I stayed in a hotel room just across from his, and whenever he practiced singing. I'd open my door. It was one of the fringe benefits of my job--getting a private recital by the most celebrated tenor on earth.''

Playboy: You seem to be optimistic about your first movie.

Pavarotti: Now I am laughing and smiling. After, I will be so down, so depressed.

Playboy: You mean you're anticipating a disaster?

Pavarotti: Yes. I am always expecting a disaster every time I do something new.

Playboy: Is that just superstition?

Pavarotti: I am scared of the unknown, and everything that I have not done is the unknown. You see, I am 46 and I am constantly taking risks: It's a risk to make a new opera like Aïda, a risk to make a movie, a risk to make anything new. Not because I want to be famous: I don't need this kind of trouble, but--

Playboy: But you'd like Yes, Giorgio to do for opera what The Turning Point did for ballet?

Pavarotti: We will see. My purpose is to make a good service to the world and hope I don't destroy my reputation, which I will if the movie is a catastrophe.

Oh, well, then I will be what I was before.

Playboy: Unless the critics really tear into you and turn some of your opera audience away.

Pavarotti: Some critics are already saying I'm a traitor for making this movie, that it will damage my voice. Probably, they have in their minds the idea that singers just sing; if you make movies, you don't sing opera.

Playboy: Would you be greatly upset if, after the movie came out, the critics all suggested you stick to singing?

Pavarotti: Oh, no. Not at all. My ego would be more frustrated if they said I sang a bad Aïda.

Playboy: Well, since that performance is a few weeks from now, we'll get a chance to find that out before this interview is completed. But as to this movie, we've watched you make it and you seem to have enjoyed it.

Pavarotti: Yes. It has been a pleasure to stay four months without thinking about my voice. I smoke a cigar if I want. I drink. I'm a normal man. When I don't work, I don't work. Do you understand?

Playboy: Actors wouldn't like to hear you say making movies is not working. But before you accepted Yes, Giorgio, didn't you have six other film offers, including the Enrico Caruso story?

Pavarotti: Yes. But Caruso's life has already been filmed twice, and very well. I don't think they should try to make one more. Now, if they tried to make the life of Mario Lama--

Playboy: Would that interest you? We've read that Lanza's films had a profound influence on you as a young man.

Pavarotti: Yes, but I would not play him, because he was not an operatic singer, he was a movie star. If you want to do his life, it must be done by a movie star, not me.

Playboy: If Yes, Giorgio makes a movie star out of you, will make you more famous than you are now?

Pavarotti: It cannot be more than now. My friend, the people who follow me must be very large if MGM thought to make a movie. And they did research it.

Playboy: This is what we've been building up to: Isn't your fame--your appearances on talk shows, in TV commercials, now in a movie--the reason some critics have accused you of demeaning your artistry, of selling out?

Pavarotti: Many people in my profession--let's say severe critics, old-fashioned people--have said that I am selling myself. They think I am doing this for me. Well, if it was just for me, I could accept half the work, pay half the taxes and end up with the same amount of money. I would have less trouble, less envy and less of a lot of other things. But then I would not be myself. I consider myself a pioneer in my profession. I feel I have this chart, this plan inside myself. I want to do something always new for the world of the opera.

Playboy: It's not what you're doing for opera but for yourself--for commercial gain--that's been criticized.

Pavarotti: If they want to say bad things, they will say them anyway. Now, if the reason is because they think that I did the American Express commercial and all those things to become well known, they are wrong. They look at the omelet from the wrong side. When I saw Pelé making the American Express publicity, I said yes, I know who Pelé is: He is the greatest soccer player in the world. Last night on TV, I saw Itzhak Perlman doing one, in the most exquisite way. But does that mean he stops tomorrow to be the greatest violinist? It is idiocy! It is an honor for me, a pleasure. When I began to sing, we opera artists were the dummies of the entertainment world. Now they ask me to be in Blackglama, to do American Express, just the way they ask other famous people in the world of entertainment. Thank God we reached this level! Thank the television!

These people who write against me, it's very obvious that they don't receive the letters of gratitude that I receive from people all over the world. Because of American Express, maybe they went to the opera. Johnny Carson brought up this subject with me on TV because it was in a magazine saying that Pavarotti doesn't care to do his best at the Met or why else would he appear on Johnny Carson? Johnny Carson means what? A derogatory thing? I mean, you are in front of one of the most intelligent men in the world of entertainment! Twenty years he's running a show like that, and most nights he is very amazing at every level. He knows that he has to reach everybody. What are these people trying to say, now that we are already on the moon? Do they mean to try to put the world of opera back in a cave, where nobody can see it? No, it is not my style. We are on television. Let's see who these opera people are. I was the first to do this, and I have nothing to regret. I see that other people are trying to do this.

I don't always know if I am going to gain by exposing myself. But I give myself with great pleasure to the audience, to the camera, the newspapers, to journalists. It's part of my profession. I would miss these things if I didn't have them. Certainly, if I bring 100 more people to the opera, I don't see what is wrong. And I really love people. Loving people, you cannot stay away, you have to reach them--through the newspaper, through television. When you have established a certain rapport and you are in this kind of demand, you realize this is exactly what you want.

Playboy: To be number one?

Pavarotti: I never took much care about number one, or any other numbers, because the audience will decide where you belong. If you belong high up, one reason can be that you give to the audience everything you have. The other reason is that you take risks constantly, like making the first live television solo recital from the Met, which I did. Caruso, for example, did concerts in places where nobody had before--and he went there in person, he didn't send a record there. I think that's the difference between me and other tenors, who are asking themselves, Oh, God, why is Luciano Pavarotti getting on the cover of that magazine? Why is he going to sell all those records? They still do ask why. Well, somebody has to be the first. And it's not just for the voice but also for a personality on and off the stage. I don't know why there should be envy at that level. It is absolutely ridiculous. Like, every time that I come out with a big story or on the cover of Newsweek or Time, you hear somebody complain.

Playboy: Someone like Placido Domingo, for instance?

Pavarotti: Well, every time I am on the cover of an important magazine, he reacts in a certain vein and the newspapers help him. It's something I would never do. If I see somebody else on a magazine cover, the first thing I will do is telephone and congratulate him, because I know how difficult our profession is. I will have the envy, of course--but inside me.

Playboy: Domingo has had his own fame, of course, but wasn't it the fact that a major U.S. magazine put you on its cover first, after considering Domingo, that fueled this public rivalry?

Pavarotti: When Time was making the interviews of tenors, looking for the most popular talent to be on the cover, I was not the tenor who was being considered. At that time, I thought they wanted to put Domingo on the cover. I didn't meet the writer who wanted to interview me until six months later. During those six months, many things did happen. I began to make recitals. I had a best-selling record. I did television. The writer followed me all over and he found my personality interesting and they put me on the cover, instead. I am grateful for that. The reason you go on the cover of these important magazines or do 60 Minutes is for your art first, and then your personality. Now, don't ask me what is personality, because I don't know.

Playboy: Your friend Giuseppe di Stefano, a tenor you admire and respect, has said that he worries about all the publicity you receive.

Pavarotti: Does he worry for himself or for me? I think he's worried for him.

Playboy: He said he believes it was ambition that killed Maria Callas, and perhaps he was drawing a parallel.

Pavarotti: What killed Callas was not ambition, poor lady. She had a heart attack in the morning and died that afternoon. She forced the maid not to call the doctor. So if it was ambition, it must be ambition to die. What killed Callas was her love for Onassis, in my modest opinion. He was the only man she really loved, and when he died, something died in her. She did not want to live anymore.

Playboy: Let's talk about your own ambition. Did you always want to be a great opera singer?

Pavarotti: No, absolutely no. I realized from the start it was so difficult. I did not have anything more ambitious in my mind than to be able to sing, perhaps after two or three years of study, an aria from start to finish without breaking my vocal cords.

Playboy: You didn't suspect you had a truly great voice? That you would become a great tenor?

Pavarotti: People think in different ways. Some might think they are going to become the greatest tenor in the world. I did not think this. To me, singing--like painting, like any other form of art--is a passion. My father always told me: The way to arrive at success is climb one step at a time. I began at the bottom. I never knew what step I was on--and I don't even know now. And I do not want to know. Of course, I know that I am pretty high, but don't ask me what I think, because I don't care. I am not turning around to see. I only care to do better what I am doing now.

Playboy: Has it been tougher to do that since the media made you a superstar?

Pavarotti: That word, it already irritates me.

Playboy: Superstar?

Pavarotti: No, no, the word media. Superstar is someone who is elected by the media, somebody who is recognized on the street. The media is the public, but it is a derogatory word.

Playboy: Depends on your viewpoint. But how do you feel about being so highly visible--having your face on posters, in bookshops, in record-store windows?

Pavarotti: Scary.

Playboy: Because of the responsibility?

Pavarotti: Exactly, Exactly for that. But there is a public that does not see me at all--Vienna, Paris, so many other places. I suppose in America they see me too much, because I spend most of my time here. But there are other countries, including Italy, that do not see me enough.

Playboy: How do you feel when you hear a story such as the one about the classical-record store in New York that posted a sign in the window saying, We do not carry pavarotti's greatest hits. Go to sam goody's?

Pavarotti: Really? My reaction is that Pavarotti's Greatest Hits was certainly made for everybody--in fact, it was the record of the year. So, first, the store is snobbish. Second, they probably did not have any more.

Playboy: With your face on display everywhere, have you come to think of yourself as handsome or sexy?

Pavarotti: I don't think so, but if some women do, I accept the compliment. Kojak is a sex symbol. I don't think we are pretty, both of us, but I can see very well why Kojak can be a sex symbol without being beautiful to look at. I don't think it is the same thing for me. I cannot describe myself, I don't see myself.

Playboy: Do you see yourself as fat?

Pavarotti: Of course, I have a lot of middle around. I don't really realize how big I am until I see myself on the screen or the television, and then I say, ''Oh, God!''

Playboy: Does size affect your voice? If you weighed 100 pounds less or 100 pounds more, would you sing differently?

Pavarotti: Generally, I like to say that an important voice belongs in an important body. But you do not have to be fat, I don't think so. Fat is not good for your heart and is not good for your singing.

Playboy: Is it frustrating to know that all your life you'll be fighting a weight problem?

Pavarotti: I eat too much. I should eat normally. Until I was 19, I did eat normally. Probably very substantially, because I was always playing, always running. Then I became a singer. They put a scarf around my neck, gave me a very heavy undershirt to wear and I went on eating the same things without exercising anymore. My friends eat more than I do and they are not so large. I don't think it is a question of metabolism, because if I really go on a very severe diet, I lose.

Playboy: But when you diet, are you happy?

Pavarotti: No. I am not. No, no, no. The first time, I lost 85 pounds. Then I gained. I lost again with my secretary in Munich, because we were there a month and I was cooking pasta for her and my wife and they were cooking for me dietetic food. You begin to eat in a sort of Chinese way--a lot of vegetables, rice and no sugar, no liquor, no wine.

Playboy: You don't drink wine with your meals. Why?

Pavarotti: Because wine is the first thing that is assimilated by the body, and so the food is going to be transformed into fat. If you drink wine, it is better certainly to drink separate from the meal. If I drink wine with food, then there is no hope. No hope.

Playboy: And you like your wines, don't you?

Pavarotti: We have phenomenal wine in Italy, probably the best in the world. Because it's not sophisticated. It's a really pure wine, no sugar added. If it is, you go to jail. The French can use sugar. We can't.

[A make-up man enters Pavarotti's dressing room.]

Playboy: Weight problems aside, your make-up is being applied and the glamorous world of film making awaits you.

Pavarotti: I don't see anything of this glamor. It's so unreal. Six o'clock in the morning, I am here, getting the makeup. Soon I will repeat a phrase 50 times in front of the camera. In between, somebody will call me on the telephone. Somebody else will call the girl who plays opposite to me. Where is the glamor?

Playboy: Only in the make-up, perhaps. Do they dote on you this way before an opera performance?

Pavarotti: Not in this detail. This is an art. This make-up man is an artist, don't you think? Don't you see that little by little, I have become beautiful? The frog has become a prince!

[Two months later, the interview resumes in Chicago, where Pavarotti is appearing at the Lyric Opera in Donizetti's ''L'Elisir d'Amore''--''The Elixir of Love.'' The tape recorder is switched on with Pavarotti's assent.]

Pavarotti: I have just to make an arrangement here with the telephone before we begin. [To hotel operator] Can you leave the telephone open just for Mr. Adler from San Francisco? After that, please close the telephone until I tell you. [As soon as he hangs up, the phone rings. It's Kurt Adler, the director of the San Francisco Opera House, where Pavarotti will go next, to sing the role of Radames in his first production of ''Aïda,'' an opera he's avoided singing for years and is extremely nervous about doing.] Hello, boobie, how are you? I have just one question to ask you: Now, tell me if it's crazy; I don't think so. We are doing a new Aïda, with a new tenor, a new conductor, a new stage director--do you think it's a silly idea to bring Maestro Toninni over from Milan from the time we begin the rehearsal until the first performance? My friend, think very deep. You know who is Maestro Toninni, don't you? He is La Scala. OK, leave me answer by tomorrow, maximum. [Pause] To make decision like that, you don't need to make a meeting. My wife? How can she be well? I am away! OK. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Ciao.

Playboy:Aïda is obviously very much on your mind.

Pavarotti:Aïda is a big and heavy storm for everybody. Twenty years I'm trying to sing Aïda and it still is not coming out like I want. I am scared like a kitten. I know very well where the difficult things are, and they are a little all over. There are so many B-flats, it's practically impossible. I never thought, with my tiny voice, that I would be able to do this big role. Radames is a soldier, a commander, and even in the voice you have to hear this kind of command. And the opera begins with the tenor--after one minute, when the voice is not warmed up, you have the aria [Celeste Aïda]. It is written in a way that you can't breathe. Your diaphragm really needs to come down. It's the terror of all the tenors. It is even written for piano. Forget about the piano, just keep your mind on the B-flat, just make the B-flat. It is very difficult. Already ten years I have been trying to keep this aria under control. I keep singing the part in a way that it becomes more and more familiar, but still, it is special. It's never easy. After the aria, the tenor goes away for an hour. The rest is dramatic and the last part is very lyric. It is a beautiful role. The last part is the most beautiful duet of the entire opera. You will see my legs tremble, because it will be the first time.

Playboy: Weren't there tenors who attempted to eliminate that first aria?

Pavarotti: I don't think so. An aria like that, they'd try to eliminate the singer first. Probably there are some who try to postpone the aria. Like you hear me on the telephone, I suggest to Mr. Adler that he bring there Maestro Toninni, who is a very, very old fox from La Scala. Now he's retired, but he's worked with the greatest conductors.

Playboy: Would you be very upset if Adler turned down your request?

Pavarotti: No. But I expect him to say yes.

Playboy: Are we witnessing the legendary tenor temperament at work?

Pavarotti: It's not temperament at all. It's an artistic request. I generally have temperament with people who have temperament. It is always an answer to somebody else, it's never an aggressive thing. People who fight are often jealous, which is stupid, because in this work, I'm telling you, there is space for ten more tenors, ten more sopranos, ten more baritones. There is a lot of room for everybody.

Playboy: Do you find yourself losing your temper often?

Pavarotti: Yes, I can lose my temper. But I have done so only five or six times in 20 years.

Playboy: What do you do--throw things?

Pavarotti: No, I just scream and I'm offensive because I say what I'm thinking. It is something I digest and digest and digest and finally, I blast it all over. When it happens, it is not in the most nice way.

Playboy: Do you lose your temper with your family at home?

Pavarotti: You must joke! I have three daughters and one wife at home. I cannot lose my temper! It is already written that I have to be a saint!

Playboy: Having not sung for four months because of the movie, did it take much preparation to get your voice back into shape?

Pavarotti: Oh, no. After the movie, I had 15 days of holiday at home. Fantastic. I was very well rested. When I practiced, even my daughter Christina, who is the critical person of the family, she went, ''Oh, God, your voice!''

Playboy: Is that the biggest compliment you can receive?

Pavarotti: Yes. From Christina, it is the biggest compliment.

Playboy: What about your wife; is she critical?

Pavarotti: She's critical. She just say, ''Well, it's good . . . it's better . . . it's not good.'' My daughters are tough because of what they expect from me. My wife is tough because she pictures me in a contest with other people. Hers is a more realistic point of view.

Playboy: What viewpoint do you hold?

Pavarotti: I have my daughters' point of view. I don't care what the others do. I listen to myself very much and try to do the best I can.

Playboy: How much do you practice?

Pavarotti: I have never practiced more than an hour a day in my life, even in a desperate time. Like, if I wake up without a voice, with laryngitis, more than an hour is practically of no use. As long as you have the technique. I'm an old bull. I know what I have to do. The day of a performance, I am very mute. I just test the voice very quietly in the morning. If it is good, I stop. The voice is growing with age. The instrument is stronger, and being stronger, it must be manipulated more, must be used a little more. Sometimes it's easily done in five minutes. I'm very tough with the voice. When I sang the first performance of L'Elisir d'Amore, I got a cramp in the diaphragm, a big cramp. But by the second performance, it was already perfect. It's like when you play tennis: In one week, you can put your game together if you want to really play well.

Playboy: Singing, then, is a type of athletic exercise, in which your stomach muscles must be in good condition in order to perform well?

Pavarotti: Something like that. Training is movement of the muscles except when you sing. Then there is no movement.

Playboy: Wasn't it Joan Sutherland who taught you correct breathing when you toured Australia together?

Pavarotti: Yes. I tried once to touch her diaphragm to see how hard to push. All the people who were there learned a lot from her. I certainly did.

Playboy: We notice when you refer to your voice, you don't say ''my.'' It's as if your voice were another person.

Pavarotti: Second person.

Playboy: Maybe first person?

Pavarotti: No, no. But he is something else, something different from me. Well, maybe you're right, he is the first person. During the movie, he quieted down and I didn't care what he was thinking about. And now, doing L'Elisir d'Amore, the voice is really back in great shape. And then I go to San Francisco for the punishment that I deserve.

Playboy: You really don't have much confidence in yourself, do you? Aïda has made you very anxious.

Pavarotti: I don't have confidence in myself. I think the best way to be successful is to be constantly scared. I am going to be always nervous, no matter what I am doing. I am nervous when I go horseback riding, because I don't know what the horse is going to do.

Playboy: And when you're singing, do you have constant doubts?

Pavarotti: Doubts? Always. The voice is not something that can go alone; it must be driven with the brains until there is no doubt. I was more confident when the people expected less than they do now.

Playboy: How often does your voice crack? Does it happen a few times in a year?

Pavarotti: No. No. No. If your voice cracks three times a year, I'm telling you, my friend, you will be world famous as a cracker. If you crack three times in 20 years, they say, ''Ahh, he cracked.

I remember that performance.'' I never crack, because when I realize I might, I just don't sing. I have to be very sick for that to happen. It did happen in my debut at the Met in 1968, the second night. I arrived sick with the Hong Kong flu. I could not sing in the top register at all. I thought to lose the voice forever. When you are in this condition, you always try to sing, to push. It's a pity. Another time, it happened in Munich. The first performance, something was not right. I sang, but nothing special. The second performance, at the end of the second act, I asked to go home. But Mr. Von Karajan came to my dressing room and told me we had to give back something like $200,000. I say, OK, I get the message very clear.

Playboy: And the message is that your voice is a valuable property?

Pavarotti: You think it's a big property? Are you going to buy my voice?

Playboy: Are you selling stock?

Pavarotti: I'll sell you stock if you want.

Playboy: Barbra Streisand once told us that she couldn't sing for friends in a small room; she felt she needed a stage for her voice. Do you feel the same way?

Pavarotti: If you hear my voice in a room, I don't think you are very impressed. You are more impressed on the stage, because it spreads all over.

Playboy: When a voice like yours spreads all over, as you say, it sometimes has a physical effect on people in the audience, like a chill or an electric charge racing down the spine. Do you think it's specifically the tenor sound that has that kind of effect?

Pavarotti: Physiologically speaking, the tenor voice is the most unnatural voice. It sometimes sounds a little like an animal, and probably from this comes the excitement you describe. I'm just guessing, though. In my part of Italy, people don't say, ''Let's go to the opera,'' they say, ''Let's go hear the tenor.''

Playboy: Don't they also say, ''Let's go boo the tenor''?

Pavarotti: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. They boo the tenor because there are so many difficult pieces for tenors. But when a tenor is good . . . believe me. . . .[Shakes his forefinger]

Playboy: Would you explain the various styles in which a tenor can sing?

Pavarotti: It is very simple. There are four steps for the tenor, four different qualities or sounds. Leggiero is the light, lyric is lyric, spinto is push and dramatic is dramatic with a falling step. One tenor can have more than one of these sounds.

Playboy: How many do you have?

Pavarotti: I don't know, but my voice covers a wide range.

Playboy: Do you feel more confident with your voice now than ever before?

Pavarotti: In certain way, yes; in certain way, no. Yes, because I am more expert. No, because ten years ago, I was younger and a younger instrument can do more.

Playboy: In other words, voices don't age like wine?

Pavarotti: Not really. I don't think so. But there are people like Richard Tucker, who had the voice in full shape when he died. Gigli sang until 69 or 70. I heard him at the age of 57 and after the opera, he brought the piano on the stage and he sang a full concert, 25 pieces. His was the kind of voice that seems to be almost eternal. There will never exist a more gifted instrument than Gigli, definitely, for sure.

Playboy: Was that when he sang in your home town when you were 12?

Pavarotti: Yes, he was the most popular and famous tenor of that time.

Playboy: And didn't you approach him afterward to say you wanted to be a tenor like him?

Pavarotti: Something like that. He was coming down off the stage and someone introduced me and he exchanged some words with me. It was one of the real important moments in my life, which made me, decide to become a singer. Gigli was a person who enjoyed life very much.

Playboy: Is that true of most tenors?

Pavarotti: Well, Pertile, from what I know, was the opposite. Schipa, I don't know. Tagliavini, let's say, middle. Del Monaco, I don't think he did enjoy much. Di Stefano, he probably enjoyed too much. [Franco] Corelli, I don't think he enjoyed at all. Bergonzi's a normal person. [Nicolai] Gedda is reasonable. Generally, people who enjoy life enjoy people.

Playboy: What about Caruso?

Pavarotti: [Smiling] You know why he made the first page of The New York Times? Because a lady in Central Park said that he pinched her. He almost went to trial. This is the original reason everybody thinks Italian men are like this, but it is not true at all.

Playboy: You mean Caruso gave your countrymen a false reputation?

Pavarotti: I don't know if he actually pinched her. I would like to think that he did, because he had a great sense of humor. You cannot resist: When you see a big behind, it is so beautiful that you want to pinch. Yes, I prefer he did, of course. He was really a joker. He pulled a lot of jokes on the stage. He put flowers in the hat of a very serious basso, and at the end of the opera, when the basso went out, all the flowers poured out. You can imagine the audience when that happened.

Playboy: Could you ever do something like that?

Pavarotti: I would never. Never.

Playboy: What was it about Caruso that made him the standard all tenors since him have had to deal with?

Pavarotti: Very simple. He was really a pioneer. The way that he carried a phrase and the way in which he sang, his musicality, it was perfect. Historically speaking, he had the courage to sing L'Elisir d'Amore in full voice, in Naples, without all the ornamentation that they were used to. Tenors before him sang in a kind of falsetto. Caruso was a tenor who was first a baritone. I think he killed more tenors than any other singer in the world, because everyone tried to imitate him. Sooner or later, they died. All the young people who tried to copy him, who studied his records. Because he had a very, very extraordinary instrument. He sang a very long phrase, very large. If you don't have his diaphragm, you can never do that. You can't copy Caruso.

Playboy: Caruso once said that singers who use their voice properly should be at the height of their talent between the ages of 45 and 50. He died at 48. Was he at the top of his voice then?

Pavarotti: I think so.

Playboy: And what about yourself?

Pavarotti: I am 46. You deduce what you want.

Playboy: Caruso felt that a great artist ought to have the dignity to say farewell to the public before his powers begin to fail. Do you agree?

Pavarotti: Theoretically, yes. In practice, I don't know, because the ego comes out. It is the ego of survival. It is the ego saying, ''What else can I do better than what I am already doing?'' When you see singers who should have already stopped but who still sing, it is because they decided they could not do anything better. They have family and friends, but nothing gives to them what the stage gives, even if they know very well that their performances are not their best.

Playboy: Caruso himself felt unloved in his native Naples, didn't he?

Pavarotti: He was criticized very much.

Playboy: Didn't he vow never to sing there after receiving negative criticism?

Pavarotti: Sure enough. He said, I am coming here to eat spaghetti and to die, and that is what he did.

Playboy: Do you think his death at such an early age was the result of his pushing himself too hard?

Pavarotti: Yes. But he did not take care, he did not use medicine. He overdid. At the old Met, he sang even four times a week. Sometimes he sang Cavalleria and I Pagliacci together. Yes, he overdid. He was very generous and he gave out even his health.

Playboy: If Caruso is faulted musically at all, it seems to center on his high Cs when he had them.

Pavarotti: Of course he had them. He sang I Puritani and La Favorita, and even if you put half a tone down, you still go to the top C.

Playboy: Is it wrong to pay so much attention to the high Cs?

Pavarotti: I think it is absolutely wrong.

Playboy: Yet you were dubbed the King of the High Cs after hitting nine of them in The Daughter of the Regiment.

Pavarotti: Well, that is different. The nine top Cs of The Daughter of the Regiment, nobody had done before me in a full voice and in the right tone. It is the thing I'm given credit for. This is not immodesty; it is the only piece in which I can say this. But I do not want to be famous for being the King of the High Cs. I am a bel canto singer. I have sung all of Bellini, all of Donizetti's operas. I am famous more for that than for the high C. High C is, of course, very good to have. It is like playing soccer: If you make one goal every week, that's good, but you have to be a complete player to be good.

Playboy: You've stopped singing The Daughter of the Regiment. Why?

Pavarotti: I tell you why I don't do it anymore: because it was done so well. It's like you climb Mount Everest. OK. You don't do it anymore. Why should you do? Doing a performance like The Daughter of the Regiment at the Met, with Joan Sutherland, her husband and the cast, it was superb; you cannot do better. Why repeat a very difficult, demanding thing just to show yourself in worse condition? Then the audience will say, ''Ahh, what a pity.'' I prefer to do something new.

Playboy: Yet there are audiences who have never heard you sing that who would be thrilled to hear it.

Pavarotti: They can hear the record.

Playboy: It's not the same. Why not put it into your concert repertory?

Pavarotti: You have to know something very important. If I prepare myself for Rigoletto, my voice follows a certain route. If I sing Aïda, I follow another route. I Puritani, another route. Turandot, another route. This means you have to prepare your body and your voice for that particular opera. A concert is a particular combination of so many operas, it would be very dangerous to try many times to make top C in a concert. I have done it, but it is very risky. A piece of good music is more important--like Petrarch's sonnets, like Mozart, Donizetti, Rossini, Beethoven. There are so many pieces of music. That thing [The Daughter of the Regiment] is athletic and the only athletic thing you can do really in a concert is Nessun Dorma, because that one really is astonishing.

Playboy:Nessun Dorma comes at the end of Turandot, which you sing as the big finale of your movie. Is that the piece most often requested at your concerts?

Pavarotti: It is a piece that everybody wants to hear. In concert, not once they don't ask for Nessun Dorma. Even in Bloomington, Indiana, where is a very refined university, I was forced to sing Nessun Dorma all over.

Playboy: What are the operas you most enjoy doing?

Pavarotti: You should ask the audience which operas they prefer. [Laughs] If you talk about presence on the stage, you have to talk about Un Ballo in Maschera, L'Elisir d'Amore, La Bohème--you are always there and, even more important, you are singing. A tenor, he is very interesting when he is singing. I mean, in Aïda, after Celeste Aïda, there is a long, long time before he sings anything else.

Playboy: Would you consider Aïda the most spectacular opera, even if it's not a tenor's favorite?

Pavarotti: Yes.

Playboy: And what about Madame Butterfly?

Pavarotti:Butterfly, they say, is the opera most often done in the world. But I prefer Bohème. It's more complete. The libretto is really incredible.

Playboy: What about Carmen?

Pavarotti:Carmen is a super opera. I've never sung it, but it is my plan to do. It is sung in French, which I learned first to sing, but I speak badly.

Playboy: For someone who has never been to an opera, which one would you recommend he see first?

Pavarotti:L'Elisir d'Amore, because it is so sparkling, so beautiful, so sentimental, comic. A pearl of music. The first time, he should leave the theater feeling better than when he went in. Not crying, just feeling happy. Don Pasquale, too. In both operas, nobody dies. But first of all, L'Elisir--the music in the beginning is genius! In Berlin, one of the greatest memories for me was when I sang the aria [Una Furtiva Lagrima], which is four and one half minutes, and at the end they made an applause of seven and a half minutes. It was really incredible.

Playboy: What opera would you suggest after L'Elisir and Don Pasquale?

Pavarotti: Then you have to choose an opera with people who die on the stage. One dead, then two dead, then three dead. We began to read the librettos when we were six, at school, as stories. I liked it very much when there were a lot of bad people, a lot of deaths. The typical is Il Trovatore.

Playboy: In general, what would you say are the things that distinguish Italian from French from German operas?

Pavarotti: The styles, which are a result of the cultures. You have a Wagnerian style, which is typical heavy German; a French style that is more ornamental and pimping, like the French are--

Playboy: Did you say pimping?

Pavarotti: Yes. It is a little decadent, but it is typical in French music, like Massenet--it's beautiful music. Then you have the Italian style, which is more involved with the words, because composers, especially Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, compose thinking very carefully about the words. It's a more forthright music. Before I became a tenor, I only knew about the Italian style. But I learned. For example, there is a Mozart style all by itself. Mozart, in my opinion, is the greatest musician. If you tell me to pick one, I will pick Mozart, because his operas are the most complete; they are symphonic and so simple in so great a way, so unique. However, a singer of Mozart is fantastic, but he will never approach a Wagner singer.

Playboy: Didn't Wagner say that opera plots are illogical but the music makes them logical?

Pavarotti: Well, Wagner puts two lovers onstage, facing each other, sometimes for 10 or 15 minutes, singing and talking. It is very illogical, but the music makes the thing logical.

Playboy: Is it very difficult to sing Wagner?

Pavarotti: I think it is much more difficult to sing an opera of Bellini than to sing an opera of Wagner. With French and Italian operas, you cannot expect to be tolerated if you have a big defect in your voice. With German opera, you can have a big defect, but the orchestration can cover you if you sing with a loud voice and act terrifically.

Playboy: Which reminds us of something Robert Merrill once said: ''When in doubt, sing loud.''

Pavarotti: That may be right, but it depends. For Merrill, who has one of the greatest and most beautiful voices I have ever heard, it can work. For somebody else, it may be the opposite.

Playboy: Singers of Italian opera avoid Wagner and most German opera, don't they?

Pavarotti: Yes. Italian singers are cousins to the French but not to the Germans. And when I say Italian singers, I mean famous singers I call Italian because of their repertoire, like Richard Tucker, Leontyne Price, Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland. These people, who are pretty famous, are Italian in style. None of them do Wagner.

Playboy: Would you like to sing any Wagner roles?

Pavarotti: One day, if God give me time, I will sing Lohengrin, because I think it is very Italian in terms of melody and it is approachable for a tenor like me. But not for ten years, if I am still around.

Playboy: And what about Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio?

Pavarotti:Fidelio is an excellent opera. Beethoven is very good, he is excellent, but you cannot say he was a genius for just one opera.

Playboy: While we're making comparisons and talking about greatness of a sort, do you agree with those who call the two greatest love duets those from Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde?

Pavarotti: They are the two greatest, I think so. Of course, I'm Italian, so I prefer Verdi. But musically, the other is colossal.

Playboy: In your autobiography, you say that your voice favors Donizetti and Verdi. Why?

Pavarotti: Donizetti more than Verdi. He wrote music thinking specifically about the voice. Composers at that time studied more than now. Now, they don't study voice at all. Today's music cannot be melodic, because it would be considered antique. And for me to sing only to prove that I can do something modern or light, I probably would not do.

Playboy: Is there no modern composer who interests you?

Pavarotti: Ah, if Benjamin Britten had written a group of songs for me. . . . But modern opera? I don't know.

Playboy: Are there any operas you think you'll never do?

Pavarotti: Probably, Otello I will never do at all.

Playboy: Because your voice isn't deep enough?

Pavarotti: No, no, no. It's just a question of the color, not a question of deep.

Playboy: Would you explain what you mean by color?

Pavarotti: There are two kinds of tenor, going back to the past: Di Stefano and Del Monaco. Those like Di Stefano were full tenors with beautiful, sensational voices and with sunshine inside it. It's not dark, it's sparkling and is considered lyric. Another lyric example was [Jussi] Björling, one of the best of all time, with a voice the color of silver, always pure like a bell. The other kind of tenor was Del Monaco, a fantastic, sensational voice; the color is dark and is considered dramatic.

Playboy: You talk of two types of tenors; have you ever heard the anonymous saying that there are three types of people: men, women and tenors?

Pavarotti: Not anonymous--said by a soprano or a baritone!

Playboy: Is it tougher for a man or a woman to make it as an opera singer?

Pavarotti: It is tougher for a woman. First, because there are more women singing. A soprano's voice is more common than a tenor's. Much more. Even now, there are at least ten first-class sopranos, but you don't find that many first-class tenors. Not of my age. Second, if she is pretty, the first thing the more famous tenors will do is ask her to go to bed with them--all tenors! A man, he can be very ugly, very tall, very large, and doesn't have this problem.

Playboy: Earlier you spoke of Gigli's having the greatest instrument of any tenor. Which sopranos would you classify that way?

Pavarotti: Joan Sutherland, certainly, without any doubt, has the greatest instrument I have heard. I cannot talk about women of the past. But Joan is able to make you cry in the cadenza of Lucia, just to realize how perfect a human instrument can be, how much devotion can be put into making this instrument sound that way. Once, before Joan became famous, she was auditioning at Covent Garden, singing Clotilda in Norma. Maria Callas was passing through with a friend of mine. Callas was talking, heard Joan for the first time and said, ''Sshh, let me hear that girl. Ooh, good, good, good!''

Playboy: Was Callas a generous or a jealous woman?

Pavarotti: I did not know her at all. She was the most incredible singer, one of the greatest of our time, probably the greatest. When I talk about Joan, I say the greatest instrument. You are sure because nobody can deny that. You don't offend anybody, you don't offend Beverly Sills, because I am sure that she knows that Joan's instrument is better. I don't know how old Joan is, but she is older than me, and she is singing like a kid. She is really singing incredible arias, like she is young. She sang The Merry Widow in San Francisco, making all the additional cadenzas that you can't imagine--fantastic.

But Callas, as the complete singer, was the best. Even though her instrument was delicate. I saw a Callas documentary on TV last night. Between very bad and very good, the difference in the throat is so small! She was never really very bad, but God, what a difference from when she was extremely good!

Playboy: Are sopranos generally considered the most temperamental in opera?

Pavarotti: It depends which soprano.

Playboy: You have been quoted as saying they are often afflicted with ''odd thinking.''

Pavarotti: Yes, but all women are like that, it is the beauty of them. The beauty of the women is this kind of thing that we will never understand. It is what makes the difference between men and women.

Playboy: Their odd thinking?

Pavarotti: Yes. It is so different, so incredibly different. I grew up with women, so they are predictable to me, but I know very well that they are generally unpredictable.

Playboy: Let's go on discussing what you call the instrument. Can a person with a great voice go undiscovered?

Pavarotti: Good singers are so few, even if they found one in a cave in Colorado, he's going to be discovered, if he's really good. So many young singers complain about not getting opportunities. . . . Believe me, if even one person with a good ear for the theater hears a talent, he is going to be on the telephone in two seconds to the entire world about such a talent.

Playboy: As for yourself, how many times did you have to be discovered before you stayed discovered?

Pavarotti: Good question. Four, five times. The person who discovered me was my agent, Mr. Ziliani. When he heard my debut, he sold me immediately to the man in Lucca who was mounting a production of La Bohème. My second discovery was by [conductor Tullio] Serafin, who brought me to Palermo to do Rigoletto. My third discovery was by Joan Ingpen, who came from Covent Garden to Dublin to hear me in Rigoletto and brought me to Covent Garden. My fourth discovery was by Richard Bonynge and Joan Sutherland, who brought me to Australia. And my last discovery was by Herbert von Karajan, who agreed for me to sing at La Scala.

Playboy: Did you have to audition for those people?

Pavarotti: I did very, very many auditions. One of the first was with Maestro Serafin in '61, the last for Mr. Von Karajan in Moscow in '65. I went to Moscow and sang for him in his bedroom, he had a piano there. I sang Traviata, which is what I made my debut with at La Scala. After, Mr. Von Karajan chose me for the commemoration of Toscanini's 100th birthday.

Playboy: Is there a conductor with whom you feel most comfortable?

Pavarotti: Of course, I have one I prefer, but I don't say. I work very well with all the great conductors. If you go by the number of times we worked together, it is Richard Bonynge. We have done so many beautiful things together onstage and on records.

Playboy: How many great conductors are there today?

Pavarotti: There is a group of ten, in my opinion, who try to get the best from the singer. The reason there are so few is because they don't have the experience, they don't know how a singer is breathing, what a singer can do, which kind of phrase the singer can carry. For example, a conductor can say, ''OK, we have three tenors who sing the same aria. I want them to sing that aria in the same way--all three, same tempo, same breaths, same everything.'' This is a big mistake. When Mr. Von Karajan went to Vienna to make Trovatore, he called me to sing Manrico. The first thing he did was go to the piano and ask me how I would sing Mal Riggendo, because he knows very well that a lyric tenor cannot carry the tempo in that piece. He only needed to hear that one. Structurally, he knew it wasn't me he had to deal with but my throat. And this showed great intelligence and experience. Another conductor who had in his mind a particular tempo for that piece would fail.

Playboy: One conductor you particularly admire is Zubin Mehta, right?

Pavarotti: Zubin is great all over: in opera, in symphonic, in everything. He was born great. He is Italian; he can do German--he does fantastic Wagner's Ring; he can do French--Carmen; and then he can do Shostakovich, Respighi, Beethoven, all of them. But what I say first, to be Italian, means a lot. Now, there are two people who would be great conductors, except they don't know Italian. I won't mention their names; they are still very good, but they don't want to dedicate themselves to opera.

Playboy: You've had some problems with the Metropolitan Opera in New York under the direction of James Levine, haven't you? We've heard you've been unhappy with the fact that it hasn't given you many new productions to do.

Pavarotti: The only new production they gave me was Un Ballo in Maschera--the most revolting production I have ever seen since I was born! It is the only new production I have sung there from 1968 until now. One new production in 14 years is not very much. Well . . . I should be more careful about this. Let me think. No, there have been a few other new productions.

Playboy: Nonetheless, have you asked the Met to let you do more new ones?

Pavarotti: What tenor doesn't ask for new productions?

Playboy: Has it given you a reason?

Pavarotti: I imagine that the reason is because I am too large for the stage and they want a better figure and they prefer somebody else. Simple.

Playboy: So you think you're denied roles because you're large?

Pavarotti: I don't think that being large has helped me, that's for sure.

Playboy: But you told us you've lost as much as 85 pounds when you had to.

Pavarotti: I have, and the Met did not offer me anything anyway.

Playboy: So you feel unloved by the Met.

Pavarotti: No, I think they love me; I think they love others more. If I am a director of an opera, I don't fall in love with a person. If you talk about respect and friendship, that's different: I have these all over. But I am one singer who goes on his own. I don't make groupie with anybody.

Playboy: Would you like to be able to sing more often at the Met?

Pavarotti: No, why? It is perfect, how often I sing there. To sing very much in a theater like that, you will tire the audience, tire the critics, tire everybody. Why make a monopoly of a place? It is ridiculous.

Playboy: When you first auditioned for [former Met director] Rudolf Bing, he didn't rush to sign you up, did he?

Pavarotti: When I sang for Mr. Bing, he liked me very much. Then somebody went up to him and whispered something and he did not take me. I was very disappointed, because Mr. Bing was already very impressed and ready to take me. What that man said to him, I never know, and I don't want to know. The person is dead. He was with the Met but had already retired when this happened.

Playboy: Not too long ago, Bing was asked what he thought of a star tenor who sings at the Oscars, clowns and peddles credit cards and acts in a movie called Yes, Giorgio. He reportedly said, ''It's so unnecessary and so undignified.''

Pavarotti: He said so? Well, in my opinion, it is very necessary, because I am intent to enlarge the world of the opera. Mr. Bing wanted to keep the world of the opera small and restricted. He did intend to keep his own theater for himself. In fact, he kept out many singers. It was his own choice. You cannot deny that he was one of the greatest men of the theater, but this statement makes me think that Mr. Bing is not an intelligent person who follows the times.

Playboy: He had harsher words about you as well. Do you want to hear them?

Pavarotti: Of course. What?

Playboy: He said, ''Seeing that stupid, ugly face everywhere I go is getting on my nerves.''

Pavarotti: I don't care what he said! If he think I have a stupid, ugly face, it is his problem. I mean, he doesn't have a good face himself. The only reason he is talking like that is because his face is not all over. Believe me. With all due respect I have for him as a man of the theater, I think he should take a little more care when he talks.

Playboy: All right, let's put aside personalities. How important is the Met as compared with La Scala?

Pavarotti: They are equal as theaters, but America is more important, and therefore, the Met is also. The record business is in New York, and so is the art. Everything important is in New York.

Playboy: How important are records to a singer's career?

Pavarotti: If you really want to be recognized, you have to make records. It's the reason America is the most important country--apart from the fact that it has three very important theaters and several others that are becoming important. But the record business is so big in America. It's 40 percent of the world market. Then Japan, with 15 percent, and then there's Germany, England, Italy and the rest of the world.

Playboy: Can you get enjoyment out of making records?

Pavarotti: It is difficult, because you don't have the atmosphere of the theater. You know you can make a mistake and repeat. You are not forced, with a knife in your neck, as you are in a live performance. The adrenaline and all the things you burn are definitely all concentrated in a live performance. An instrument cannot respond in the same way when you're in a studio.

Playboy: Are you generally happy with your recordings?

Pavarotti: I am generally unhappy. I am too demanding. I look for perfection. In records, they give more importance to the orchestra than the voice. They should make a better balance. I feel that way about all records--more so for mine.

Playboy: A lot of the selections on your albums overlap, which makes it confusing for the buyer to know which ones to select. You have collections ranging from King of the High Cs to World's Favorite Tenor Arias to The Great Pavarotti. Some albums simply repackage many of the same songs. How do you feel about that marketing approach?

Pavarotti: I did not think we need so many titles, but they say this is America and they know what the market is. If you have ten albums, they say, it makes it easy for a person to buy one. They say they want to reach everyone. It is very well done. I don't like the idea myself.

Playboy: How do you feel when you listen to some of your early records, made when you were 25?

Pavarotti: I cry.

Playboy: Why?

Pavarotti: Because I thought to be much better than I was.

Playboy: Let's go back to how it all began for you. Your mother first convinced you to study singing, didn't she?

Pavarotti: At the age of 19, when I finished my studies and was teaching elementary school, my parents had a kind of meeting in the house to decide what I should do permanently. Should I become a professional gymnastics or mathematics teacher, since I was very good in both? Or should I try to become a singer? My father was against my being a singer, because he knew how difficult it was. He was a tenor himself, an unsuccessful one, and he was always skeptical. He knew how high the odds against success were and he probably did not think I had the talent. But I remember my mother saying, ''Well, I'm sorry, but when Luciano sings, I feel something that I don't feel when other people sing. The voice is not big, but there is something inside.''

I wanted to at least make the attempt. I said to my father, ''Let me try now, because until I am 24, I can still change professions. But if I don't try, when I am 30 I cannot then become a singer, because I will have a family, another profession and I will never have the guts or the need to study.'' I believed very much in concentration, even more than in talent. I mean, there are many mathematics professors in the world.

Playboy: And very few Einsteins?

Pavarotti: Yes. It was a very hard decision to make, because I don't think my voice was special at all.

Playboy: When you began studying seriously, it was with Arrigo Pola, who was a tenor in your city. Did he recognize your talent immediately?

Pavarotti: Yes. It's what he says, at least. I make an audition for him. I sang Addio alla Madre, a very heavy and dramatic aria. It was around the 15th of January, and he said, ''On the 31st of January, we will begin.'' This was in 1956. I remember that date well: First, it's the date of the saint protector of my city; and, second, it's the date I fight with my girlfriend--since that day, she is very unhappy.

Playboy: Because she lost you?

Pavarotti: Because she married me.

Playboy: Were you surprised that Pola wanted to begin immediately with you?

Pavarotti: Honestly? I was expecting him to say that, because I could hear that the voice was sounding very free.

Playboy: Were your lessons expensive?

Pavarotti: No, he never asked to be paid. He always said, ''I don't want money.'' It took me six months to build my technique, just to be able to sing two arias consecutively without being forced to stop. He was very severe about that. And at that time, I did not have the sense of humor I have now. I was very serious, very determined. I went to bed early, I did not go out, I stopped playing soccer, I did exactly what my teacher said. To succeed in our profession, you need two things: a good ear and complete trust in the person who is teaching you; complete trust. After, when you go on the stage, never forget you are an eternal student and always try new experiments. The biggest thing, though, a student must have is the power to believe and the determination to go on.

Playboy: Speaking of a good ear, it was Pola who discovered that you had perfect pitch. How valuable is that to have?

Pavarotti: Near irrelevant. I have very, very close to perfect pitch, which is when you know which is the note without the orchestra--big deal! If the orchestra plays a pitch, you must go with it; you cannot go different even if your pitch is more perfect. So what business is a perfect pitch? What can you do? Compare the sound? I don't think you help anybody else except the conductor, when he tunes up the orchestra. He can listen to you, then say to the first violin, ''You are a little flat.'' But if you sing in the shower, who cares if you are one tone high or one tone lower?

Playboy: That reminds us: Do you sing in the shower?

Pavarotti: I used to, when I was young. Now, after certain performances, when I am very, very happy, I sing in the shower. But briefly. Briefly.

Playboy: After Pola moved away, you studied with Maestro Ettore Campogalliani. How did he differ from Pola?

Pavarotti: He did not know my voice as well as Pola, but he knew the rest better: music, interpretation, even a certain secret, which was the key--how to save my voice.

Playboy: What was the secret?

Pavarotti: Well, it was a secret, like I say.

Playboy: And you don't want to share it?

Pavarotti: I am not telling you, because this kind of technique is something a teacher can hear if a student is learning, not something a student can read about in a magazine. My barber can be a great teacher, 1000 people can teach singing; they can tell you when you are right or wrong. But they don't know how to correct you, to tell you what to do instead.

Playboy: And that's what Campogalliani taught you?

Pavarotti: After two years, he said, ''Your voice is perfect; we have to do something about your expression.'' I tried to sing louder, to produce a different kind of sound, but it did not work. Two more years passed and the voice wasn't progressing at all. The singer, yes; but musicality is something else, that's something you're born with, you don't learn. When I started with Campogalliani, there were many other voices better than mine, but I had to learn that the voice is not all. There is musicality, pitch, technique and, most important, personality. I did not yet understand this. I remember sitting in a room while he was giving a lesson to other tenors who were fantastic. Later, I said, ''Maestro, what am I doing here? I just finished hearing three sensational voices; mine is a joke.'' He said, ''You don't sing just with the voice; you have something else that these people do not have.'' I said, ''Well, if you say so.''

Playboy: You obviously put your faith in him. Were you discouraged as well?

Avarotti: I was. In fact, my wife, who was my girlfriend at that time, said, ''Let's try six more months. If nothing happens, we can both go back and teach.'' I then sang a concert in Ferrara and it was a disaster. I sounded like a baritone, terrible. Fifteen days later, I had another concert date. I refused to go to any more lessons, I just rested my voice. When I sang in Salsomaggiore, the voice came out so good it seemed to be a miracle. From that day, the voice improved.

Playboy: And then you won a contest and got to sing Bohème for the first time with än orchestra. How was that?

Pavarotti: Terrible, terrible. Here you are, you have always sung with only a piano, and now there's a huge orchestra. . . . It was quite an experience. It was like making love for the first time.

Playboy: And you remember both firsts?

Pavarotti: Of course; how can I forget? You can't forget these things. But I can't tell you anything about my debut. I was unconscious. It is 20 years now and a pirate record has come out of my debut.

Playboy: Have you heard it?

Pavarotti: Oh, yes. I sound like a very, very young spring chicken.

Playboy: Obviously, we're talking about your debut as a singer, not as a lover--

Pavarotti: It's the same kind of experience. [Laughs]

Playboy: Well, we were going to ask you: Have you ever sung a romantic aria to your first love, your wife, Adua?

Pavarotti: Oh, sure, the first time I met her. It was at a friend's party. It was 1953, I was 18--a long time ago. Someone said, ''Luciano, you have to sing.'' I said, ''I sing if everybody else sings.'' So everybody sang and I sang, too. My wife sang, too, unfortunately--because she was so bad. It made me very tender toward her. I thought, That lady sings like that, she need protection. I really fall in love from that. It was the compassion.

Playboy: Was she very embarrassed?

Pavarotti: Not at all. She was terrible, but she wasn't embarrassed. She did not like opera when I met her. She was a pop fanatic. She knew by heart the opera librettos, the stories, but she hated the music. Very funny. Now, of course, she likes the music. I knew her for eight years before we married in 1961.

Playboy: Were you seriously involved with only her?

Pavarotti: Are you joking? I always said, ''Either I marry that lady or I don't marry at all.'' If you really want to know, our relationship was very dramatic, very not smooth--the opposite of smooth--

Playboy: Rocky?

Pavarotti: Right, very much rocky, you could say. It was so rocky, the 30th of September 1961, when we were married, I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror and said, ''It's going to be a disaster!'' Instead, since that day, there was a most incredible change.

Playboy: On whose part?

Pavarotti: She changed. There was no doubt about that. She totally changed. I think it was probably our sex battle before we were married, because, of course, a man always wants sex and she did always deny.

Playboy: That must have been very difficult, to keep you frustrated for eight years.

Pavarotti: Yes, yes. If you talk about it today, it would never happen. Even from her side, I'm sure it would sound like too much to make somebody wait eight years.

Playboy: Did you have any prior sexual experience as a kid?

Pavarotti: Well, I am really from another generation. I don't think I even once attempted to do something like that, because I did not have enough time. I was playing cards, soccer, volleyball--everything! I did not have much time left for the sex life. And at that time, the sex life was considered forbidden in Italy, a little taboo.

Playboy: Do you now pass along some of those Italian taboos? As the father of three teenaged daughters, are you concerned about their virginity?

Pavarotti: They can make love when they want. There is no need to even talk. They know what I always say is to be careful to make love, share that first pleasure, with a person they love. After, they can probably change their mind, for the pleasure of the pleasure, but the first time, if they love each other, even better.

Playboy: Which must have been the case with you.

Pavarotti: [Smiling] I think so.

Playboy: Adua has mentioned publicly that you constantly receive sexy photographs from women.

Pavarotti: Well, she must know and see the pictures before me and then hide them; because I never see sexy pictures. Beautiful girls? Yes. Sexy pictures? No, I never saw.

Playboy: Does she ever get jealous?

Pavarotti: If my wife is jealous, she would die, my friend. The word jealousy is to be afraid of something that doesn't exist. The moment you have an affair, it's not jealousy anymore, it's knowing for sure. It's quite different. As for beautiful women around me, I have 1,000,000 every day. My wife jealous, she would die. But no, probably deeply she always knows she is in command.

[This conversation has taken place on Pavarotti's birthday. The interviewer, by way of celebrating, has arranged for two Playboy Bunnies from the Chicago Playboy Club to drop by. Ironically, the Bunnies arrive at this very moment in the interview, with cake and balloons, singing ''Happy Birthday'' in Italian to a very surprised and pleased Pavarotti. He blows out the candles, opens some wine and poses jovially for photographs. When there is another knock at the door, he deadpans, ''Wait, it must be Penthouse, for sure.''

A month later, the interview resumes in San Francisco in a less festive but much-relieved mood. ''Aïda'' has opened to mixed reviews, with the local papers being especially harsh. The Chronicle said Pavarotti gave an ''undistinguished . . . marginal performance'' and let the audience down. The Los Angeles Times critic called him a ''tenor in vocal trouble,'' saying he wasn't ''as good as he used to be.'' The second performance was telecast by satellite to Europe, and reviews there were far more favorable.]

Playboy: How does it make you feel to know that hundreds of people stood outside all night in the rain the night before Aïda premiered, hoping for standing-room-only tickets?

Pavarotti: My friend, we artists suffer for many reasons. When I saw that, I know we must accept our suffering with great, great pleasure. Because there are people we very obviously make happy. There's a certain price that we pay: the nervousness, the restrictions we have--we cannot go just anywhere--but it is part of our sacrifice for the people. I remember once after doing Favorita at the Met, we had dinner inside the theater and didn't leave until three o'clock in the morning. It was a very severe night, freezing. I left through the stage entrance and saw three girls almost frozen. They told me they had driven from Washington to see me. I said, ''Come to my apartment.'' I opened a bottle of champagne for them. People who drive that far in the wintertime and stay after to see you, they deserve any kind of attention, really.

Playboy: The newspapers reported that scalped tickets for Aïda were going for $1200 a pair. Do people really pay that much?

Pavarotti: I don't know, but I did see classified ads in the paper for that much. I hope they did not. Tickets should have the normal price; $1200 for a pair of tickets makes for very good publicity, but then, when people go to the theater, they are expecting the voice of Moses. I can't give a $1000 performance.

Playboy: Before the curtain rose on opening night, Kurt Adler came out to make an excuse for your leading lady, soprano Margaret Price, saying that the bad weather had affected her but she would sing anyway. She effectively upstaged you before the opera even began. Were you angry?

Pavarotti: I have a very bad taste about that. It put Adler in a spot, poor man, to have to say the weather was bad. He should not have agreed to do something like that. They did not consult me. If somebody is sick, you cannot object; but if somebody is afraid to be sick, then that is not very pleasant. Not just because I was singing my first Aïda but because of the rest of the company. A serious artist should never announce he's sick unless he realizes he is sick. And if you are really sick, you don't sing! I would never do that sort of thing. People of first class will never do something like that to colleagues.

Playboy: Is Margaret Price first class in terms of being a performer?

Pavarotti: Absolutely. She's a great singer, a beautiful voice.

Playboy: Had you sung with her before?

Pavarotti: No.

Playboy: Do you think it was fear that made her behave that way?

Pavarotti: When you are afraid, you can't just behave like you want. Who is not nervous? What about me? Singing Aïda for the first time? I'm just telling you what I would have done myself: I would have shut up and tried to sing.

Playboy: By the way, did Adler finally agree to your, ah, artistic request to fly in Maestro Toninni from Milan for the performance?

Pavarotti: Yes. I think Mr. Adler makes a very smart decision--of course, under my suggestion.

Playboy: How did you react to the unfavorable reviews of your performance?

Pavarotti: It is absolutely unjust to criticize my performance of Aïda! My first performance cannot be like my 20th or 30th, and at least one critic did not mention it was my first performance and this was deliberately nasty. I sang the only Aïda possible for a voice like mine. I sang a beautiful Aïda, I was very satisfied with myself, but it was not dramatic, because I am not a dramatic tenor. I'm frustrated because I think the critics are ignorant. If they just turned to the record Björling made, they'd realize the Aïda I was singing was more or less like that. They cannot expect more from me! Some critics say that it is not my opera--well, let's see: Who is going to do the opera? You don't find many tenors who can sing it. Certain critics are like dogs: They try to pee on the monument!

Playboy: This has obviously irritated you.

Pavarotti: It has irritated me very much and makes me suffer. Because I think it's unfair, and everything that is unfair irritates me. I am a very serious professional person. I never consider the critics for the power they have but for what they can do to help a person improve. The critic can be a very important friend of a singer. The moment a singer stops listening to the critics, he is beginning to finish his employment. So I read very, very carefully what they say, then I make my own deduction.

I've always found critics very fair with me. But now, I think either I've become old in one day--and I don't think so--or they changed attitudes. In Germany, Austria, Spain, where the second performance was televised, we received beautiful reviews. So in Europe, they say fantastic things, but here they say terrible things. OK, they want to shoot on me, then let them shoot. Here I am, they cannot miss me, I am very big! I know why they are shooting, anyway. I know: There is some kind of conspiracy.

Playboy: What do you mean?

Pavarotti: Simple. There is somebody else who is pushing the critics from behind.

Playboy: Placido Domingo?

Pavarotti: I don't say any name. But I have a feeling there is a certain kind of conspiracy behind the critics. Should I say to them, ''You want me to leave your country? I do! Then you will win your battle!'' But be sure, I am not going to retire from your country, not for one minute! Because I am here for the public, not for the business! Only if the public one day says, ''Mr. Pavarotti, it's time you go,'' will I go.

Playboy: You're emotional now, but do you really believe there's a conspiracy against you?

Pavarotti: There is very, very clearly a conspiracy. And the fact that I am answering them and saying that there is a conspiracy will make them write even worse about me. I don't care. I think it is unjust and I think some important critic should make this point.

Playboy: Let's move on to the subject of finances. Your business manager, Herbert Breslin, claims you are the highest paid concert singer in the world. Do you know if that's true?

Pavarotti: If he says so, probably. But it depends how you see it. Let's say I'm going to sing a concert for 10,000 people and they pay me $50,000. If they make $100,000, at that precise moment, I am not paid at all, I am paying them.

Playboy: You're stretching your point a bit. But since you make about $10,000 per opera performance, does the figure you mentioned mean that in concert you make about five times more than you're paid for opera?

Pavarotti: Yes, because in a concert, there is not the production costs.

Playboy: Do you feel you are well paid?

Pavarotti: I am very well paid; I am super well paid. But it's not like in the past, when no one paid taxes. Then you had real money. Now, even if I am paid $50,000, I am going to keep between $7000 and $10,000 if I am very, very lucky. So one doesn't accumulate a fortune the way one did in the past. But don't ask me what is money. I don't know where it exists. My wife is totally in command of the financial situation at home, and my manager takes care of my business with the theater. I just say yes or no in terms of accepting things that I want to. I don't think I'm a good businessman. I made two or three investments; they were disasters. So many famous opera singers have died in misery. The first and most famous of all is Schipa. He died in a New York hospital, neglected by everybody, and he was probably the richest tenor in the world. He had 10 or 12 houses in Italy with the relatives there. I think that broke him.

Playboy: You've owned a number of houses yourself, haven't you?

Pavarotti: I have already changed houses five times, but this last one is the one I found everything that I want. I've spent all the money I've earned in 15 years building two houses. That becomes an enormity, not an investment. I have to sing three more years to pay for it. Then I begin to put aside some money for my daughters when they marry. But I am a very simple person. I don't spend money for extravagance.

Playboy: Don't you own a Ferrari?

Pavarotti: No, I don't have a Ferrari, because it's not comfortable. I have a Maserati, because it is comfortable.

Playboy: Before you acquired such simple comforts, you grew up a great deal more simply than that, didn't you? You had to take a lot of jobs when you were young.

Pavarotti: Yes, before I became a singer, I was an insurance salesman. For two years, I sold door to door. I was forced to talk, and today I'm a good talker. But it was bad for the voice. And in the years before, I remember I once worked for somebody who sold firewood. It was very boring and depressing. The owner tried to take advantage; he paid me very bad. It was a bad experience.

Playboy: Did you ever consider working with your father as a baker?

Pavarotti: I worked for my father during the holidays sometimes. But my father woke up at midnight to start baking at two. It could not be my job, not ever. Never. Because I like very much to sleep.

Playboy: When you were 12, you almost died in a coma. What happened?

Pavarotti: It was a blood infection and at that time we did not have penicillin. To make the story short, it finally arrived from America and saved my life. I was in a coma for a couple of weeks. It seemed an eternity. I heard the doctor say I would die. I wasn't able to react, but I heard everything.

Playboy: Were you prepared to die at so young an age?

Pavarotti: I was a philosophic child. I remember very well one particular thing when I was nine. It was during the war and we were bombed constantly, every day. I saw people massacred in the middle of the street. Very violent, very terrible. I asked my grandmother for more cheese to put in the rice, but she said, ''We have to save for tomorrow.'' I said, ''Tomorrow? We may not be here tomorrow. Today we are.'' For a kid of nine, it was a deep thought. Since that time, I have had many doubts about religious things; they are not yet resolved. I thought to go to the Pope, but he has enough trouble.

Playboy: Probably does. How do you feel about the Pope, anyway?

Pavarotti: I am completely nuts about him. He is a man who cannot keep a low profile, because he has a great personality. They try to keep him down, but they cannot.

Playboy: In that way, he's similar to Pope John XXIII, isn't he? (continued on page 240)Luciano Pavarotti(continued from page 94)

Pavarotti: Pope John XXIII was probably the first where the man was more important than the Pope. He was very pastoral, very human. Once he was on a very severe diet and he escaped once or twice for a little snack. I liked this. I liked even the idea that he said that somebody can be Communist and still believe in God. I don't think he was a great political Pope, but he certainly was a great man.

Playboy: Speaking of politics, what are yours?

Pavarotti: Of political questions I am totally ignorant.

Playboy: Do you prefer to be that way?

Pavarotti: No, I don't. But I just am. Because my philosophy begins in my house, which is open to everybody. In Italy, we have so many different political ideas, we are unstable. If you have six Italians, you have six points of view. And there are so many parties, you cannot believe. There was one called Beefsteak--only those who liked beefsteak were in that party. The moment I like you as a man or a woman, the moment I like your soul, then, for me, politics are excluded completely. That's what makes me ignorant, but it's a great relief, because I can be myself. I have my own opinions, of course, but I don't want to say them, because it's like the vote; it must be very secret. I want people to take me for my art and for my person.

Playboy: What was your family's opinion of Mussolini?

Pavarotti: I don't know; you should ask them. Make a trip to Italy.

Playboy: Surely, you were old enough to be aware at the time?

Pavarotti: This will be the first time I am going to answer this particular question. [Hesitates] No, I am not going to answer this, even if I know very well what I think of Mussolini. It is a political question and I refuse to answer, because I am not political, but it is very smart of you in the way you put the question.

Playboy: How old were you when he died?

Pavarotti: I was ten--meaning six, by the standard of children growing up today with television.

Playboy: Did you hear Mussolini on the radio much?

Pavarotti: I hear the voice of the tenor; I never hear the speech of Mussolini.

Playboy: Do you remember your reaction when the Americans came at the end of the war?

Pavarotti: My friend, it was one of the best days of my life! At that time, the last Germans and the last Fascists were shooting people on the streets--right up until the Americans arrived. I remember them as if it was today. I had never seen an orange before and a black man on the tank was throwing oranges. It was something. You don't know what means the word liberation until you have a war in your house. That day, I will never forget.

[Two weeks pass before the next conversation, this time in New York, where Pavarotti is appearing at the Met as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's ''Rigoletto.'']

Playboy: You've done Rigoletto many times; do you still get nervous before each performance?

Pavarotti: I have done more than 300 performances of Rigoletto. It is the opera in which you are tested to see if you are still young. It's very Italian: You have the virgin, the prostitute, the wife of another man, and the duke tries to seduce all three of them. Coming after Aïda, it's very difficult, because there I had a tendency to enlarge the voice and in Rigoletto, the elasticity is no more there. That is the reason I am nervous.

Playboy: The way you describe Rigoletto's plot makes us think of the line from Duffy's Tavern in which opera is defined as ''when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, he sings.'' Ever hear that one?

Pavarotti: Is it an American joke? You know, people of my generation, they were not interested in the opera, even in Europe. They thought it was something funny. But when they came for the first time to see really well-made opera, they said, ''This is not what we thought it would be; we expected something ridiculous.'' I say, ''Thank you very much; it is not ridiculous.''

Playboy: So the audiences are better today than 20 years ago?

Pavarotti: Definitely better. When I began to sing in 1961, they had been talking for 20 years about the opera as a dead thing. And to be perfectly honest, when I began, I did not see many operas sold out. At Callas' debut in Milan, there were many, many empty seats. The people who did come to the opera were all the same, every night. Now it has changed. Different people, younger people. I was one of the first to ask that young people be brought in for free to watch the final dress rehearsal of my performances. I always do that now.

Playboy: What about the young people in your own family? Will there be other musical Pavarottis to follow you?

Pavarotti: Well, they have all asked me at some time or another, ''How is my opera voice?'' I am honest: ''Unfortunately, my dear, you don't have the voice. You also don't have the problem of going onstage and having the name of your father behind you.'' No, not good. For example, the daughter of Gigli. She once tried to make a musical career and everybody was skeptical about her. If she had been another person, she would have had a normal career.

Playboy: So we'll have to be content with just one Pavarotti?

Pavarotti: I don't have much more to do, my friend. I don't think I am going to do more than two or three new operas.

Playboy: We thought you'd be singing until you were 80.

Pavarotti: I sing what I have already sung. I've already done around 30 roles.

Playboy: Caruso did 57.

Pavarotti: Caruso sang four performances of one opera, then two of another. I'm not that kind of person. If I do an opera, I have in mind to do it for a long time.

Playboy: With all the cities in which you've sung, are there any to which you don't much care to return?

Pavarotti: I don't like Tokyo; I'm sorry. Too crowded. I was in Moscow twice, in '65 and '75. The first time was much better in terms of the audience; they were more disciplined. The food was better for us. Ten years later, the food was worse and they were very noisy, they opened candy. We were very disappointed. The first time, they were all listening; it was very solemn, very religious. But everything is changing around the world. I would like to go to China.

Playboy: The way your schedule is, you don't have much time to be with your family, do you?

Pavarotti: I see my wife six months a year and my girls, probably four months. It is not very much, but it is better than nothing.

Playboy: When you are traveling, do you find time to read?

Pavarotti: I don't have time. I once read all of Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace, because it is relaxing reading. If it's too deep or too sad, emotionally I do not need that. My life is already very demanding. Before, being a teacher, I read all the philosophers from the very first ones until Kant. You know who is Kant? Don't get mixed up with the American dirty word. What I found about those philosophers was that they are all right and I am right and you are right.

Playboy: Ever try relaxing with drugs, with marijuana?

Pavarotti: I did try twice smoking marijuana. It's definitely not good.

Playboy: As compared with, say, cigarettes?

Pavarotti: It is much worse. The cigarette doesn't make you change your brain, your thinking; marijuana does. The danger is at a certain point, people are unable to control themselves. I once had a shot of Demerol and I said, ''Oh, God!'' For the first time, I really understood the people who smoke or who do these things, because the feeling is absolutely incredible.

Playboy: When performing, have you ever sung with anyone who was drunk or stoned?

Pavarotti: Not in our profession, because you really have to be superalert; the music doesn't wait for you. An actor, for example, can make a big, long pause and say his words very, very, very slow and you can think he's a great actor, but he's probably drunk. In music, it's one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. You cannot get away, you cannot mumble the words.

[Back to Los Angeles: Pavarotti has just seen a rough cut of ''Yes, Giorgio.'' Since the last interview session, he has sung at a benefit concert with Frank Sinatra in New York, which raised $2,000,000 for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute to help fight cancer, and he has played tennis with John McEnroe for a TV special. The final Playboy session takes place by the side of a hotel pool.]

Playboy: Now that you've seen your movie, are you as pessimistic as you were when we began this interview?

Pavarotti: I am almost afraid to tell you: I am very pleased, very proud. It is much, much better than I thought. I was very surprised. It is not too serious; it's comic, funny. It's not gross. It's very elegant.

Playboy: Then you are not ashamed of it?

Pavarotti: Not one minute. [Director] Franklin Schaffner, he brings out something very important for me, but we have to let others judge. I would never expect to be considered a Marlon Brando, but it is what we wanted. It's a very professional movie. I am not exalted about it, but I am satisfied.

Playboy: How long do you sing in it, altogether?

Pavarotti: Twenty or 25 minutes in two hours. Not even a quarter of the movie.

Playboy: Since you're your own harshest critic, it sounds like the beginning of a new career for you. Barbra Streisand once said that if she had to choose between singing and acting, she'd choose acting--

Pavarotti: I can believe that for a person like her. But not for somebody like me.

Playboy: Especially when you have someone like Frank Sinatra introducing you as the greatest singer in the world. How was it to sing with him at that benefit concert?

Pavarotti: It was a very artistic, beautiful, human experience for me. They raised $2,000,000. It's a great thing to know that I did participate to create this kind of money. And Sinatra is a real professional, who gets nervous before going out, even after so many years in the profession. People ask why a person like that is caring and the reason is there. In the morning, he was rehearsing with the orchestra and he kept at it until night. For me, he is a real miracle. He sings now like a young kid with all his power. An incredible, superb singer. He's unbeatable in this century. He can be considered the Caruso of the general public. He's so multicolored, so musical, so expressive--the sound of the voice, the way he approaches the music, the way he presents himself. Just the way in which he sounds to your ear and the freshness of the voice--you could not say that Frank is older than me.

Playboy: Are there other popular singers who have also moved you?

Pavarotti: You are testing me in a world I have not had time to become an expert. Ella Fitzgerald, for example, is a great, beautiful singer. And Edith Piaf--when you say great, you should add another great for her.

Playboy: Have you ever considered recording albums of other than opera or classical songs, such as the Beatles' repertoire? Or Bob Dylan's?

Pavarotti: No. No, no, no. An album of pop songs is really just not my taste. I don't say it is bad taste, it is not my taste.

Playboy: How about doing an album with someone else, the way Placido Domingo has with John Denver?

Pavarotti: No. This is very bad taste, because you use the name of another person to try to enlarge your audience. It's the only best-selling album he's had, but he used the name of another person to do something like that. Is that good taste?

Playboy: Domingo and Mehta teamed up for a TV tribute to Caruso. What did you think of that?

Pavarotti: I think Placido used the name of Caruso to make people see the thing. It is very, very unfair. I saw him singing the first two arias and I was very sorry. That was not the way to celebrate Caruso. First, nobody asked them to celebrate Caruso. Caruso was celebrated the last time in 1975 in Naples. I was one of the ten tenors chosen. Placido was chosen, too, but he did not show up. But to come out on the television and say, ''Oh, here we are. I am celebrating Caruso. . . .'' What really means that? It's the most unserious and unfair thing that has happened on a stage, and it was very embarrassing. It was really the festival of bad taste, like many other things that Placido does. People complain because I expose myself too much--but was this thing serious?

Playboy: You've had the opportunity to meet many exceptional people you do like. Are there any American artists you still look forward to meeting?

Pavarotti: There are too many; but one I would like really to meet and talk to is Mr. [Vladimir] Horowitz.

Playboy: Did you have any particular heroes when you were young?

Pavarotti: One of my heroes was a horse called Rebo. He always won all the competitions. He was sold to America and he was a very poor father.

Playboy: In your book, you wrote that when you were a boy, you'd watch all the animals making love. That makes you an expert at something besides opera. So what animal, in your expert opinion, makes the most ridiculous love?

Pavarotti: The most stupid is the bull--he takes two hours to begin, and when he's there, pssst! Stupid! The most human is the horse. The horse almost begins to talk, and he takes a long time.

Playboy: Well, as far as answers go, you won't be able to improve on that. So we'll just ask you: Is there anything left for you to conquer?

Pavarotti: For me? Everything I still have to do I must conquer. In the world of opera, what you are, what you really are, is not a joke. If you want to stay at the top, you cannot fake it. It is very difficult to stay at the top. Beyond that, I would like to be indestructible; I would like days to have 48 hours; and I would like to try once more to make a very good movie, to present well the world of opera on the big screen.

Playboy: But don't you also have a dream to retire and become a gentleman farmer?

Pavarotti: That is true. Well . . . farmer, yes. Gentleman, I don't know.

''Well, every time I am on the cover of an important magazine, Placido reacts in a certain vein. It's something I would never do.''