Among his grand exploits, having cheated the government (25 billion liras of settlement in 2000); having blathered endlessly about charity while making a fortune; having sought the coziness of commonplaces...
But these are not great sins and we are not to judge sins anyways. Much worse would be having contributed to the impoverishing of music by reducing its ambiguity to a steadfast restated pronunciation of self-evident elements. Melody, pathos, lyrics, energy, in other words making the kitsch out of it. It was thank to him that in the last thirty years people forever learned that the word 'tenor' was to be associated with big men singing moving things on stage, solitary as monads and without real interaction with a opera (only "moments"), in a cloud of exteriority and lies under which the remains of music stays as nauseating as a jingle heard too many times. Pop music, in other words. Without the rebel element.
The Pavarotti kitsch will follow us for a long time, like a trail left behind his steps. It is everywhere in the newspapers now. Politicians before everyone else, because LP was a political tool obviously (politics masked by charity), and then the classic shower of hyperboles by celebrities' mouths. All the hype to hide everything that is human like misery or smallness.
Anyway. I don't think I will remember Luciano Pavarotti after this week and I doubt I will ever think about him evermore. Yet it matters to me to recognize in him one of the many, say, riders of the falling country who with great weight of trivialization helped the fall in these times.