Bea Wain was at the rehearsal for a Three Tenors concert in Los Angeles when she started chatting with Luciano Pavarotti. “He was listening to some young operatic singers,” she recalled. “He used to audition these people all over the country, and he would coach them, he would help them.”
Eventually someone told Pavarotti that Wain was also a wonderful singer. “Oh, I’d love to hear you,” he said. She told him how she had recorded a swing version of Martha, an operatic number he sang. “And he said, ‘Show me, show me.’ And I started to sing. And he joined in — it was adorable — and he pretended he was a trombone player . . . we had a lovely time.”
She had