The Voice of God

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

I heard Luciano Pavarotti sing live only once. It was at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade along the Charles River in Boston. Scores of thousands of people sat on the grass or stood to hear the greatest voice of the century. Many of them wept openly at the stunning beauty of the sound. I was one of them.

The performance was free and part of it was used in the not terribly brilliant film “Yes, Giorgio!” In a still photo of the outdoor concert scene, I’m the young man in the third row, one hundred eighty-third from the left.

Many didn’t know — because while he had one of the most powerful voices anyone has ever possessed, paradoxically he rarely tooted his own horn — that Pavarotti raised many millions of dollars for suffering children of war-torn countries, that he worked with the United Nations to promote and protect human rights, to protect refugees.

It was his voice that people remember, that I remember. (You can jog your memory here.)

I don’t believe in God, but hearing that man sing, I knew why people do believe in God. When Pavarotti died, thirteen years ago today, although I knew it wasn’t true because there were and would be other voices to remind us of what we call divinity, it felt then as though there was a little less God on this planet Earth.