Pavarotti to retire after tour

Luciano Pavarotti, whose effortless tenor voice and powerful stage presence dominated opera for decades, plans to bow out like a superstar with a 40-city tour that will end with his retirement.

The singer, who started in a church choir at the age of 5 and became known as “The King of the High Cs,” said he will bring down the curtain on a 43-year career with an international tour taking him from the Balkans to Buenos Aires via London, Paris and New York.

“The tour is long, but I never perform like a rock star night after night. I shall do a maximum of two or three concerts a month,” he said of his global finale that could take him well past his 70th birthday next October.

“It is exactly 43 years I have been going around here and there. Sometimes I don’t know which bed I am waking up in,” he said.

Pavarotti cannot put a date on when the tour will end or where. “I don’t know. When they are finished, I am finished.”

With more than 100 million albums sold, Pavarotti is the most successful classical artist in the recording industry’s history and popularized opera in the Three Tenors concerts with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. But he said: “I would very much like to be remembered as a very serious opera singer.”