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April 5, 1976, was perhaps the biggest night in Uncle Nunzio’s life. It was on this night he finally saw Luciano Pavarotti. Up until then, Uncle had followed the great tenor’s career by listening to recordings and glimpsing him on Channel 12. From the start, Uncle had sensed greatness.
I had been given two free passes to see Pavarotti in concert and I didn’t hesitate to take Uncle. That magical night at the Spectrum, where you could still smell the perspiration of athletes mixed with the faint aroma of marijuana, the bigger-than-life tenor from Modena, Italy, stole our hearts. On that night, he truly became the Great Luciano.
Uncle was spellbound from the moment we entered. He sat in awe as the audience filed in, some dressed in formalwear. It was as if he had trouble believing this was really happening, not just an idle fantasy. Uncle was silent through the first half, breaking out of his trance to applaud wildly at the end of each number. It was when Pavarotti began "Nessun Dorma" Uncle leaned over and whispered, "Now do you believe in God?" At intermission, to my astonishment, Uncle compared Pavarotti not only to Mario Lanza, but Enrico Caruso.
After that night, Uncle never saw Pavarotti live in concert again, but the memory burned like a supernova. Everything in Uncle’s life was dated with its relation to that evening. Everything that happened to Uncle was either before April 5, 1976, or afterward. After that night, Uncle was never the same. He worshipped Pavarotti with the na�ve hunger of a teenager. He collected articles and books about the tenor. I helped him videotape every television performance. He collected all of Pavarotti’s CDs before he ever had a CD player. (An oversight the family finally rectified one joyous Christmas.)
Men like Uncle Nunzio do not casually flirt with idol worship. They are especially not given to worshipping other men. I can only compare his infatuation with Hemingway’s Old Man who truly loved "the great DiMaggio." When this kind of love happens, it is a marvelous thing. It is all encompassing, as if the man — in this case Uncle Nunzio — absorbs the greatness of the person he worships.
The life of an old man can be lonely if they manage to survive their loved ones. Simple hero worship sustained Hemingway’s Old Man in his lonely battle with the powerful marlin in "The Old Man and the Sea," and it sustained Uncle Nunzio in the loneliness of his apartment. Often I would find him staring out the window at the lovely church across the street, while the sound of Pavarotti filled the room with "Nessun Dorma." I had a friend who claimed if an alien saw Warren Spahn or Whitey Ford pitch, he might not know what they were doing, but he would know they were doing it better than anyone else. That same alien upon hearing Pavarotti for the first time would immediately grasp one thing — whatever this human is doing, he is doing something immortal.
Last week I stopped off at Uncle’s apartment to drop off an Italian newspaper. It was a hot, sunny day, but because his arthritis had been acting up, Uncle hadn’t turned on the air conditioning. His living room window was wide open and he was staring at the brightly gleaming church across the street. Luciano was singing "Nessun Dorma" and Uncle toasted him with a tumbler half-full of homemade wine. But there was something different about this day. When I looked closer, Uncle’s eyes were moist.
"The Great Luciano has died," he told me and, with that, his sadness overflowed into tears.
I sat down and let him fill up my glass. "We will always have April 5, 1976," I said.
Uncle nodded. And then we were silent, letting the Great Luciano’s voice fill the void.
