ITALY:The mayor of Luciano Pavarotti's home city was among the first to hear the singer had died. "They rang to tell me at 5.20," said Giorgio Pighi. He went straight to the town hall. On his bike.
Modena is that sort of a place. Both intimate and unpretentious, yet its contribution to the world has been extraordinary.
Modena has given us Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bugattis, balsamic vinegar and the tenor with the squid-ink black hair and beard who was yesterday lying in an open coffin in the nave of the city's Romanesque cathedral.
In death, Pavarotti emanated serene calm. There seemed, indeed, to be the ghost of a quiet smile on his lips.
He wore a dinner jacket with a white bow tie. His hands were crossed on his ample paunch. A rosary was woven between his fingers, next to the white handkerchief that he carried at recitals.
The coffin was lined in silk of exactly the shade of maroon used for the seats of La Scala and many other opera houses. Covering the body there was a gossamer mesh, decorated with a single gold G-clef.
At the head of the coffin were two drawings by Alice, Pavarotti's four-year-old daughter by his second marriage. One showed him wearing a huge black beret of the sort he used in his later years to hide his baldness.
Most of those who came to bid farewell to Modena's greatest son crossed themselves as they approached the body. Some genuflected. Quite a few lent over the coffin and blew him a kiss or gave a little wave.
For, unlike so many of the cosmopolitan, multilingual grandees of bel canto, Luciano Pavarotti remained a part of his home town. To many of his fellow Modenese he was as much the baker's son as a planetary star.
"My father knew his father. They were both in the choir," said Alfonso Valmori, who drove a van for the post office until he retired. He sometimes met Pavarotti at the Club Europa 92, which the opera singer owned. "And then we'd have a chat. About motor racing, usually. But I'm not exceptional. Lots of people here knew him."
Maria Salsi said she had come to take her leave of a "good man who did a lot of good things". She said that when she got into financial difficulties after her husband died, "people said to me: 'go and see Pavarotti. He'll help.' I didn't. But I've always remembered that." Today will be the turn of the stars. Everyone here was agog to know who would turn up for the funeral.
Bono has confirmed and Andrea Bocelli is down to sing. The two remaining Three Tenors, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, were thought racing certainties.
But, for the rest, it was wild rumour. Some had Nicolas Sarkozy, George Bush and even Vladimir Putin attending.
Yesterday, however, the stage still belonged to the chorus: to Luciano Pavarotti's fellow Modenese. -