Pavarotti's daughters blast 'false' row claims
Luciano Pavarotti’s daughters have reportedly complained about British media reports that they are squabbling with the late tenor’s second wife.
They also said they were not aware that their father made any changes to his will as he neared death after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer, as reported by some.
“We know that in Italy, as elsewhere, false news and idle inferences that involve us are coming out. This is causing us bitterness,” Cristina Pavarotti said, reading a statement to Italian state television news that she said contained the views of herself and her two sisters.
At times, she sounded tearful as she read. TV broadcast her voice but she did not herself appear on the news.
The statement from the three daughters of the opera star and his first wife, Adua, denounced the press for “feeling the need to speculate on purported bickering, phantasmagoric wealth, last wills and testaments that we don’t know anything about.”
State TV said the women were angered by stories in Italian and British newspapers saying that they are quarrelling with Pavarotti’s second wife, Nicoletta Mantovani, with whom he had a young daughter, and that their father had “hidden wealth.”
The late tenor’s manager, Terri Robson, confirmed that the three sisters had put down their complaints about the media reports in a letter, excerpts of which Cristina read to state TV, but said she had not yet seen the entire letter.
Among the reports since the 71-year-old Pavarotti’s death last week was one in the Turin daily La Stampa saying the tenor reportedly wrote a new will a couple of weeks ago.
State TV said part of the sisters’ statement that was not read on the air indicated Pavarotti’s will would be opened in a few months.
“The death of papa for us has been, like for all those who lose a parent, a lacerating tear,” Cristina Pavarotti said in reading the statement.
She said the sisters had been helped in coping with their sorrow by the “demonstrations of sincere love and extreme respect” for the singer that poured in from every part of the world.
Tens of thousands of fans filed past Pavarotti’s open coffin in the cathedral of Modena, his hometown, and opera and pop stars joined Italian politicians at his funeral at the weekend.
“It was a moment of great sharing, for which we are full of gratitude,” the sisters’ statement said. “Now the time of mourning really begins.”
