Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ailing Luciano Pavarotti & Sings Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” at the Grammys (1998)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: When the star is unable to per­form, a tal­ent­ed under­dog is plucked from the cho­rus and thrown into the spot­light with just min­utes to pre­pare.

It’s a crowd pleas­ing plot, one that occa­sion­al­ly plays out in real life, as it did at the 1998 Gram­my Awards, above.

The twist was that the under­dog role went to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, pinch-hit­ting for her friend, oper­at­ic super­star, Luciano Pavarot­ti, benched by a sore throat at the zero hour.

Giv­en the nature of the event, the Radio City Music Hall audi­ence prob­a­bly wouldn’t have mind­ed had the planned pro­gram­ming been scrapped in favor of “Respect,” “Nat­ur­al Woman,” or any num­ber of tunes Franklin can crush with­out bat­ting an eye­lash.

Instead, she stuck with “Nes­sun Dor­ma,” the famous final act open­er from Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Tur­nadot. Nev­er mind that it was Pavarotti’s sig­na­ture aria, that the man had pop­u­lar­ized it to such a degree that your aver­age foot­ball hooli­gan could iden­ti­fy his voice from a record­ing. Over a bil­lion view­ers tuned in to catch it on 1994’s Three Tenors spe­cial on TV, then rushed out to buy the sub­se­quent live album, a rare crossover hit.

Franklin wasn’t total­ly green in the Puc­ci­ni depart­ment. As mas­ter of cer­e­monies Sting informed the crowd, she’d per­formed the song two nights ear­li­er at a fundrais­er for Musi­Cares. Still, a fair amount of chutz­pah was nec­es­sary.

Nat­u­ral­ly, a hand­ful of opera purists refused to fall under the spell, even when Franklin hit that cel­e­brat­ed high B, but they seem to com­prise a minor­i­ty.

Pavarot­ti, whom Sting pre­sent­ed with a liv­ing Leg­end Gram­my imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Franklin’s per­for­mance, died in 2007.

As for that oth­er Gram­my leg­end, Franklin reprised “Nes­sun Dor­ma” for Pope Fran­cis in Philadel­phia last fall, again putting her per­son­al stamp on it by switch­ing from Ital­ian to Eng­lish mid­way through.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

Duel­ing Divas: Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick Sing Two Clas­sic Ver­sions of ‘I Say a Lit­tle Prayer’

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday