The Three Tenors

• 1. Introduction

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  The Three Tenors - Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras - stepped onto the ancient stones of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome on the 7th of July 1990 and changed the way the world thought about classical music. Around 800 million television viewers watched that night. What they witnessed was not merely a concert. It was the birth of an unlikely supergroup - a title normally reserved for rock and pop acts - born out of friendship, a fight against illness, and a single charitable impulse. How did three opera singers from Italy and Spain become the most commercially successful classical performers in history? And what did that success cost them, and the art form they loved?

• 2. A Friend Returns

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  José Carreras had been diagnosed with leukemia and, after treatment, was fighting his way back to the stage. The 1990 Rome concert was conceived in part as a welcome-home gesture by his friends Domingo and Pavarotti. Italian producer Mario Dradi, together with German producer Elmar Kruse and British composer and producer Herbert Chappell, came up with the idea. Proceeds went to the José Carreras International Leukemia Foundation. Zubin Mehta conducted the combined forces of the orchestra of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the orchestra of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. The venue - the ancient Baths of Caracalla - gave the evening an atmosphere no indoor theatre could have matched. Herbert Chappell and Gian Carlo Bertelli produced the filmed version for Decca Records, and that decision would have consequences none of them anticipated.

• 3. The Record That Rewrote History

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  The album recorded at Caracalla - first released as Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert - became the best-selling classical album of all time, a title confirmed by the Guinness World Record. It charted at number one in Italy, Spain, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. In Australia it was certified six times platinum; in the United Kingdom five times platinum. For their initial appearance, the three tenors had agreed to accept relatively small flat fees for the recording rights, which they then donated to charity. The album unexpectedly reaped millions in profits for Decca Records, causing resentment among the singers, who officially received no royalty payments. Domingo suspected that Decca had paid Pavarotti privately to keep one of their top contracted artists content. Pavarotti denied it, insisting: "We got nothing." Years later his former agent and manager Herbert Breslin wrote that Pavarotti had indeed secretly received 1.5 million dollars - money the other two tenors, who were not under contract to Decca, did not receive. For every subsequent concert and recording, the singers negotiated far more carefully.

• 4. World Cup Stages

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  The 1994 FIFA World Cup final drew the trio to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where nearly 50,000 people attended in person and around 1.3 billion viewers worldwide watched the broadcast - a figure that dwarfed even the Caracalla audience. The 1994 concert album reached number one in Spain, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, earning platinum certification in multiple countries. Four years later, at the Champ de Mars beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris, James Levine conducted the 1998 FIFA World Cup concert. Then in 2002 the trio traveled to Yokohama for the World Cup in Japan and Korea. Each of these events carried a different character - the intimacy of an opera-house orchestra transferred onto a stadium scale, with a repertoire that moved from Puccini arias to Broadway numbers to Neapolitan songs and pop hits. Their signature piece, "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's opera Turandot, was usually sung by Pavarotti and became so closely associated with the World Cup that its opening notes could silence a crowd.

• 5. A World on Tour

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  Following the success of the 1990 and 1994 concerts, the trio launched a world tour across 1996 and 1997 that moved through Wembley Stadium in London, Ernst Happel Stadion in Vienna, Giants Stadium outside New York City, Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, and Camp Nou in Barcelona. The Vancouver concert at BC Place took place on New Year's Eve 1996. In 1997 they played the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Skydome in Toronto, and Pro Player Stadium in Miami. A planned final Houston concert was canceled due to very low ticket sales. Two benefit concerts during the same stretch raised money to rebuild the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. One of those benefits was held in Pavarotti's hometown of Modena; the other in Domingo's hometown of Madrid. The following years added concerts in Tokyo, Pretoria, Detroit, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., Cleveland, and São Paulo, as well as a benefit concert in Chicago in December 2000 that donated proceeds to the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. In 2001 the trio performed in Seoul and then inside the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

• 6. Money, Criticism, and Law

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  On their first worldwide tour, each tenor received around one million dollars per concert - a fee that was without precedent for classical musicians. Critics accused them of performing for financial gain rather than art. Pavarotti's response was direct: "We make the money we deserve. We're not forcing someone to pay us." Domingo invoked the decades each had given: "For 30 years we have given in blood the best of our lives and our careers." Carreras pointed out how modest their fees were compared to athletes, pop singers, and movie stars. Opera purists raised a different objection, arguing that the concerts debased the form. Domingo answered them in a 1998 interview: "The purists, they say this is not opera. Of course it's not opera, it doesn't pretend to be an opera." Legal trouble came from another direction entirely. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed antitrust action against Warner Bros. and Vivendi Universal, finding they had conspired to avoid advertising or discounting the Rome and Los Angeles albums in order to protect sales of the jointly released Paris concert album. Separately, the German government pursued two of the three singers over unpaid taxes; they settled out of court with an undisclosed fine. Their concert organizer and promoter Matthias Hoffmann, who handled their taxes at the time, was sentenced to jail.

• 7. Final Notes

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  The Three Tenors gave their last concert together at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, on the 28th of September 2003. A reunion was scheduled for the 4th of June 2005 at the Parque Fundidora in Monterrey, Mexico, but Pavarotti's failing health meant he could not appear; Mexican pop singer Alejandro Fernández took his place. Among the many traces the group left in popular culture, the Seinfeld episode "The Doll" repeatedly referred to José Carreras as "the other guy", while in Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, the Three Emperors of Yliaster were named in their honor. Their recording catalog included The Three Tenors Christmas, conducted by Steven Mercurio with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, drawn from a concert at Vienna's Konzerthaus on the 23rd of December 1999. The Paris 1998 album, conducted by James Levine, earned Gold certification in France, Austria, and Switzerland. A DVD of their concert in Bath was issued solely as a corporate gift - a quietly telling footnote to a career that had always negotiated the border between high art and high commerce.