The Three Tenors
The Three Tenors were an operatic singing trio, active between 1990 and 2003, and termed as a supergroup (a title normally reserved for rock and pop groups)[1] consisting of Italian Luciano Pavarotti and Spaniards Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. The trio began their collaboration with a performance at the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy, on 7 July 1990, the eve of the 1990 FIFA World Cup Final, watched by a global television audience of around 800 million.[2] The image of three tenors in formal evening dress singing in a World Cup concert captivated the global audience.[3] The recording of this debut concert became the best-selling classical album of all time[4] and led to additional performances and live albums. They performed to a global television audience at three further World Cup Finals: 1994 in Los Angeles, 1998 in Paris, and 2002 in Yokohama.[3] They also toured other cities around the world, usually performing in stadiums or similar large arenas to huge audiences.[5][6] They last performed together at Schottenstein Center in Columbus, Ohio, on 28 September 2003.
The Three Tenors repertoire ranged from opera to Broadway to Neapolitan songs and pop hits. The group's signature songs included "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's opera Turandot, usually sung by Pavarotti, and the ballad "O Sole Mio", which all three tenors typically sang together.[7]
Recordings[edit]
The concerts were a huge commercial success,[36] and were accompanied by a series of best-selling recordings, including the original Carreras-Domingo-Pavarotti in Concert, subsequently reissued as The Three Tenors In Concert (which holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling classical music album),[4] The Three Tenors in Concert 1994, The Three Tenors: Paris 1998, The Three Tenors Christmas, and The Best of The Three Tenors. Zubin Mehta conducted the performances in 1990 and 1994. The Paris concert was conducted by James Levine.[37]
Carreras and Domingo have appeared together on a number of other albums including Gala Lirica (with various other artists),[38] Christmas In Vienna (with Diana Ross),[39] and Christmas in Moscow (with Sissel Kyrkjebø).[40]
Royalties[edit]
For their initial appearance together in Rome in 1990, Carreras, Domingo, and Pavarotti agreed to accept relatively small flat fees for the recording rights to their concert, which they then donated to charity. Their album unexpectedly reaped millions in profits for Decca Records, causing some resentment on the part of the tenors, who officially received no royalty payments. As reported in the press, Domingo suspected that the record company paid Pavarotti on the side, in order to keep one of their top contracted artists content.[18][41] Pavarotti denied this, insisting: "We got nothing."[18] Years later his former agent and manager Herbert Breslin wrote that Pavarotti had indeed secretly received $1.5 million that the other two tenors, who were not under contract to Decca, did not receive.[42] For subsequent concerts and recordings, the singers were much more careful in assuring financially advantageous contractual terms for themselves.[43]
Legal issues[edit]
The success of the Three Tenors led to antitrust action by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against Warner Bros. and Vivendi Universal. It found that they had conspired not to advertise or discount the albums of the Rome concert (released by PolyGram, later taken over by Vivendi) and of the Los Angeles concert (released by Warner Bros.) in order to protect sales of the jointly released album of the 1998 Paris concert.[46]
The Three Tenors also encountered trouble with the German government. In 1999, two of the three singers paid an undisclosed fine to the German government as part of an out-of-court settlement for tax evasion.[47] In addition, the German government accused the tenors of owing large back-taxes. Their concert organizer and promoter, Matthias Hoffmann, who was in charge of their taxes at the time, was sentenced to jail time for his role in the alleged tax evasion.[48]