The Three Tenors: Paris 1998

Under the Eiffel Tower

France won the World Cup that summer. But what I remember more vividly is the concert.

This wasn’t the moonlit miracle of Rome 1990. Nor the stadium spectacle of Los Angeles 1994. Paris was different.

There was a new conductor. James Levine stood on the podium—not Zubin Mehta. The Three Tenors’ long-time musical companion, the Indian-born conductor who had shared both World Cup concerts with them, was absent this time.

And the venue. Beneath the Eiffel Tower, on the Champ de Mars, 150,000 people spread across the grass. They say two billion watched on television around the world.

A hundred and fifty thousand people, sitting quietly on a summer lawn, listening to three men’s voices carry through the night.

The Weight of Tradition

By the time they reached Paris, the Three Tenors were the most famous singers on earth.

Rome 1990 was an accident—nobody expected three opera singers to make history on the eve of a World Cup. Los Angeles 1994 was proof—they showed it was no fluke. But 1998?

1998 was tradition.

Sometimes, tradition is harder to carry than a miracle.

Pavarotti was 63. His voice no longer had the effortless lightness of a decade earlier. Domingo was still the warm Spaniard, but he was investing more and more in conducting. Carreras—he had survived leukemia, but that journey had left its mark on his voice.

Their voices had changed.

Not worse. Just… different. Richer in some ways, heavier in others—like old friends you still recognize even though their faces have aged.

The Sound of Paris

Carreras opened with Pietri’s “Io conosco un giardino,” a lyrical aria from an operetta, the Italian melody drifting like wind through leaves.

Domingo sang a song his own son wrote—“Memoires de Danton.” Father and son, in dialogue across a generation.

Pavarotti took on Dalla’s “Caruso”—a song about the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso, written nearly a century earlier. Pavarotti, singing about another tenor, perhaps knowing that someday someone would sing about him too.

Then the three voices came together for the medley.

They sang “Sous le ciel de Paris”—Under the Sky of Paris—in this city, that song hit differently than anywhere else. They sang “’O sole mio,” “Because,” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

A Liverpool football anthem, sung by three Italian and Spanish opera tenors, floating beneath the Eiffel Tower.

The world, for that moment, felt small and beautiful.

Nessun Dorma

Pavarotti’s final solo was, inevitably, “Nessun Dorma.”

It had been his signature since 1990. In Rome, that High B soared like a rocket. In Los Angeles, it was a victory cry. But in Paris—it sounded like a man talking to himself.

Not conquest. Confirmation.

After

This was the last time the Three Tenors would perform together for a World Cup.

In 2007, Pavarotti died of pancreatic cancer at 71.

In 2021, James Levine passed away.

Domingo’s later years were clouded by controversy. Carreras still sings, but his voice has aged too.

I occasionally pull out this album—Atlantic 83110-2—whose cover shows four people: Levine standing beside the three tenors, smiling.

Four of them, only one still singing.

But that applause—150,000 people clapping in the warm Paris night—and those voices, threading through the iron lattice of the Eiffel Tower—they’re still here.

As long as someone plays this CD, they’re still singing.