They're Baaack!

By Martha Duffy

The 56,000 tickets, priced at up to $1,000, have almost sold out. The venue, Dodger Stadium, is being transformed from a ball field into a fancy theater with a neoclassical stage flanked by graceful columns -- which, like the promoter, come from Hungary. Behind that will be an instant park made from 30 truckloads of assorted greenery -- amid which two four-story-high waterfalls will come plashing down. Except during the performance. In deference to the three supertenors who will make up the dream program -- Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti -- the cascades will be stilled. This Saturday's concert (to be aired live on PBS and repeated the next night) may mark the final of the World Cup, but will anyone in Los Angeles be thinking about soccer?

The production is an attempt to top one of the biggest entertainment coups the music world has seen in decades. Four years ago, on the eve of the World Cup final in Rome, the same three tenors came together for the first time to give a songfest in the Baths of Caracalla. The concept was already grandiose, but its success outstripped the wildest expectations of those involved. About 800 million people worldwide saw the television broadcasts. The record turned into by far the best-selling classical album of all time (total sales: around 10 million, and still going strong); only a dozen or so albums of any description have sold more copies. The program's most popular aria, Puccini's Nessun dorma, became a fight song not only for the World Cup competition but also for record buyers everywhere, who used it as an anthem to get them onto the freeway in the morning or ready to confront the boss. All'alba vincero (At dawn I shall win).

The idea of featuring three of the world's leading tenors -- not just one, or one plus a soprano -- was extravagant and plain sexy. Ever since the initial recital there has been a constant demand for more. Says Domingo: "We could have been singing six or eight concerts a month all over the world." All three tenors have a sure sense of their image, however, and avoid overkill. They liked the original idea because they love soccer and played the game as boys. Domingo, in fact, did not accept engagements during the tournament until he knew the schedule of the Spanish team.

Like the legendary fifth Beatle, there is a fourth member of this trio: conductor Zubin Mehta. An internationally renowned maestro who will shuttle to Munich immediately after the concert to conduct Tannhauser the following night, Mehta is a big catch for what is basically a pops performance. "Somebody has to steer this boat," he says. On a promotional video, Mehta appears as happy as a child at play, mixing it up with his three hammy friends. This is a rare sight; he is famous for his podium scowl. The unwonted ebullience points to one of the charms of the Three Tenors format: everyone is loose, laughing and ready for a little horseplay.

Tenors are notorious for their vanity, and it has been assumed that these three must be rivalrous. But their insistence that they are in fact good colleagues has the ring of truth to it. Domingo, 53, and Pavarotti, 58, especially, have huge careers, more work than they can possibly handle. The evidence of good fellowship can be found on the 1990 video, in the medley that closes the concert and is at the heart of its success (there will be two of them this time). Says Carreras, 46: "The audience loves most the things that seem to happen spontaneously, and we are all Latins who like improvisation."

The medley -- composed of show tunes and popular chestnuts -- is divided so that the three men toss the melody back and forth, each singing part of every song. There is some mild one-upmanship: Domingo sustains a high note, it seems, for several bars; Pavarotti's eloquent eyebrows start working overtime. But the songs meld seamlessly, and that is the result of cooperative effort.

The superstars have at least one good motive for getting along well: financial. When they signed contracts for the Rome concert, neither they nor their management teams foresaw the extraordinary revenues that the event would generate. The singers accepted a flat fee from Decca, with no royalties. Economically, it was a disastrous decision. Music-industry sources have it that Pavarotti, who records exclusively for Decca, used his clout to sweeten his deal once it was clear that the album was going through the roof. When word leaked to the others, Domingo, who free-lances primarily with Sony and BMG, was said to be especially peeved.

This time around, all the performers are demanding stiff fees. Wary of the huge financial commitment that was being asked for, Decca hesitated to commit itself, and the Warner Music Group jumped in. The new deal is estimated at nearly $1 million for each artist. That's the way to sing for your supper.

A vast promotion campaign has already started. The idea, says impresario Tibor Rudas, a specialist in mammoth outdoor attractions, is to reach beyond opera buffs to people "who wouldn't know whether Aida is a spaghetti or a swear word." Commercials that ran during soccer matches on cable TV's ESPN started the hype. A music video that will air around the world shows the singers gleefully kicking around a soccer ball and singing what the backers hope will be the new Nessun dorma: the brindisi, or drinking song, from Verdi's La Traviata. (The promoters have not forgotten their prize song; Pavarotti will sing it just before the final medley.)

Already printed and being distributed internationally are 250,000 programs in five languages; the 170,000 at newsstands and bookstores in the U.S. sell for $10. A billboard campaign will be launched in major cities. Rudas reports successful negotiations with the FAA to encourage the diversion of air traffic from the stadium. Merrill Lynch is providing 56,000 binoculars to those lucky enough to attend. Add to that the usual souvenir paraphernalia: coffee mugs, baseball caps, T shirts. Top of the line: a $250 enamel box (nothing's in it). After the CD and the video are rushed out at the end of August, there will come another version of the program: a clothbound gift edition augmented with more than 100 photos of the performance and behind-the-scenes action. Encore! The Three Tenors will have plenty of encores.

If the tenors exist in what might be called competitive harmony, their fans take sides. The lines have been drawn for some years now. Members of Pavarotti's huge following claim that he has the most beautiful natural voice -- and they are right. They could add exquisite Italian phrasing and a personality that leaps over the footlights -- or, indeed, the waterfalls and greenery.

Domingo's partisans point to the extraordinary breadth of his career. He is about to sing his 108th role, and his work ranges from lyric opera to darkest Wagner. He is the better actor and the finer musician, a good pianist, a conductor who is growing in stature, the new artistic director of the Washington Opera -- in all, an opera superman.

Carreras is the sentimental favorite. A graceful lyric tenor in his youth, he now often sounds dry, and his vocal heft has never approached that of the other two. He went through the ordeal of leukemia in the mid-'80s and pulled his career back together afterward. Now up to a dozen of the 50-odd performances he gives each year benefit the leukemia foundation he established, and his admirers are convinced that they have the best man, the purest stylist. Says Patrick Smith, editor of Opera News: "Carreras fans are vociferous. They're the ones we hear from most."

In the early planning of the Rome concert, someone proposed that it be run like an Olympic event, with a panel of judges scoring each singer. Of course the scheme did not survive. For one thing, there would have been soccer-size riots in the Baths of Caracalla. For another, the Three Tenors is too good an idea to tinker with. As Pavarotti -- a great sigher -- sighs, "In four years, if we're still alive, we will probably do it again." His high-octave pals agree. But when the year 2002 arrives, who will replace them? A Golden Age of tenors is approaching its end, and the truth is that stars of this trio's magnitude may not appear again for decades to come.

With reporting by William Tynan/New York