Opens: October 24
Genre: Biography
Duration: 114 minutes

In the penultimate scene of his new documentary Pavarotti: Genius is Forever director Ron Howard cuts to the final act of Puccini’s Tosca. Pavarotti is performing one of his signature roles, Cavaradossi, a role he has sung 58 times in his career. With the extraction of a phrase: “Never have I loved life so much,” Howard reveals the quintessence of his portrait of Luciano Pavarotti: one of the greatest tenors of our time, a man insatiable for life, a hedonist who lived through his heart, an iconoclast who lived for opera but outside its rules, a father and husband who was loved to his final day.

Through some eyes, Pavarotti lived life on a pedestal. Twelve years after his death in his resting place, Howard memorialises him there.

Howard’s documentary is a reverential celebration of a naturally gifted singer, who as the son of a baker from Modena commanded international opera stages with his high C’s, would sell over 100 million records, brought opera to stadiums with audiences of billions and shifted the needle of his art with The...