Pavoratti at Chichen Itza, 1997 (Reuters photo by Heriberto Rodriguez).

It may have been his last great concert.

Luciano Pavarotti, the great opera tenor who died last week, performed before 17,000 people at Chichen Itza in April 1997. The concert was broadcast to more than 200 countries around the world.

A stage was built in front of the Temple of Warriors. El Castillo bore silent witness as maestre Pavarotti sang selections from La Traviata, La Boheme and Madame Butterfly. Though critics and audiences considered the concert a great success, not so the authorities in charge of preserving the ruins of Chichen Itza. Since that time, no other event of that magnitude has been permitted, and whenever someone proposes to hold a function at Chichen Itza the Pavarotti concert is frequently invoked as what not to do.

Pavarotti apparently enjoyed his stay at Chichen Itza so well, he had furniture from the room he stayed in shipped back to Italy.

For more details about Pavarotti’s visit to Chichen, see Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Castillo’s article in Mundo Hispano.