Anonymous - 10-13-2003 at 09:06 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20031012-9999_mz1c...
Locals hope Pavarotti's appearance changes the tenor of quiet border town
By Sandra Dibble
October 12, 2003
MEXICALI ? This sprawling state capital commands none of the drama of Tijuana, none of the colonial charm of Mexico's older interior cities. But as
Baja California's second largest city turns 100 this year, its residents are sweeping the streets and cutting paths through the desert in a bid to
make history.
Luciano Pavarotti, the legendary tenor, has agreed to appear Saturday outside town in the Laguna Salada, a broad, salty basin where nothing grows and
nobody lives. For one night, as many as 42,000 spectators are expected at sundown to hear his voice rise from this stark and arresting landscape.
It could be scenery for an Old West movie, with its wide skies pierced with jagged lines of mountain ranges, a panorama more fitting for a lonesome
cowboy than a 68-year-old Italian opera singer in the twilight of his career.
Still, organizers are counting on "Pavarotti Without Borders: The Night of the Sun" to carry their city's name far beyond this desert on Mexico's
northwest border.
"What we want is to position Mexicali, that people talk about Mexicali, that they know we exist on the map of the world," said Netzahualcoyotl P?rez
Rom?n, a member of Mexicali's centennial committee and a housing developer whose company, Urbi, is the concert's major sponsor. "We wanted to link our
city with a personality of his magnitude."
A lesser figure might be overshadowed by the scale of the place. But Pavarotti's powerful presence and the unusual setting is expected to draw
Hollywood celebrities, Mexican business magnates and top government officials to this magno evento, the crowning event of more than 450 celebrations
marking the centennial of Mexico's youngest state capital.
With tickets ranging from $10 to $1,000, the event is not just for the rich and famous. As the date approaches, the excitement is palpable in taco
shops, in government offices, on the campus of the Autonomous University of Baja California, where Geov? Gonz?lez, a 19-year-old communications
student, paused in the rectory on a recent weekday afternoon.
"People all around the world who didn't even know that Mexicali existed are going to be talking about Mexicali," said Gonz?lez, whose family splurged
on four $40 ticke.
And in Mexicali, even people who never cared much for opera are talking about Pavarotti, about where he will stay and what he will eat and how he will
get around during his four-day visit. No detail is too small: La Cronica, one of two daily newspapers, is reporting that Pavarotti has requested 50
suites for his staff, nine pillows for his bed, and a kitchen of his own.
In record shops, where there's a rush to purchase Pavarotti CDs, the most requested song, is "O Sole Mio" (Oh My Sun). This is the city, after all,
that captured the sun, the saying goes; a city where summertime temperatures can rise to 115 degrees, and residents call themselves Cachanillas after
a small, spiny desert shrub.
"We were saying, 'Why doesn't he come here when it's really hot?'" said Violeta Land?n, a 57-year-old secretary taking her lunch break with her
sister. They had just finished a meal of tacos al pastor inside the air-conditioned Asadero Ocotlan, and were stepping outside into the 90-plus degree
weather. "This isn't hot," Land?n shrugged.
Not anyone can survive here, residents say with pride. But since its birth in the early 1900s, Mexicali has grown from a small agricultural community
near the Colorado River delta to one of Mexico's 20 largest cities, with a population close to 1 million.
Fed by a system of canals, the region for decades depended on the cotton crop grown in the irrigated fields of the Mexicali Valley. But today, the
city counts 176 maquiladoras that employ more than 50,000 people, said Roberto Valero, director of the Center for Economic Studies. A large number of
residents, about 35,000, work across the border in Imperial County.
If Tijuana is the New York City of Baja California, Mexicali is more like Kansas City, quieter, less intense, a city that has not forgotten its rural
roots while growing increasingly urban and industrialized. Even the terrain is different: While much of Tijuana undulates over canyons and hillsides,
Mexicali stretches flat in all directions, and on some days the pungent smell of outlying fields and stables wafts over the center of town.
Unlike regions of southern and central Mexico with monuments to the pre-Hispanic civilizations, "we can't offer the Pyramids of Chichen Itza, nor the
Pyramids of Teotihuacan," said Mayor Jaime D?az Ochoa. Nor can Mexicali compete with the historic plazas and cathedrals of older cities such as
Queretaro, Morelia and Monterey, he said: "The most we have is sun, and land."
What they have is the Laguna Salada, a desert basin that dips as low as 13 feet below sea level. It is bounded by two mountain ranges, the Sierra
Cucapah and the Sierra Juarez, which drops dramatically some 4,000 feet to the Laguna Salada from the mountain pass of La Rumorosa.
Cucapah Indians call it Lake Macuate, and in geological terms, the Laguna Salada is a closed saline watershed that is connected to Mexicali's canal
system. Dry for decades, in 1984 it was filled with water to avert flooding after a dam was opened for maintenance upstream in the United States; by
1998, the water had evaporated.
For years a fertile fishing ground, in dry periods, it has been a place where NASA sent astronauts to train and filmakers set stories about the Wild
West and the North African desert.
Today, people come for off-road racing, to gaze at the stars or scour the skyline for extraterrestrials.
For residents, the region conjures stories of mystery and hidden treasures, but also haunting memories of a governor said to have sent dissidents here
in the 1950s to be tortured and buried.
"It's our 'Twilight Zone,'" said the Mexicali poet and author Gabriel Trujillo. "It is a place where people deposit their fears, their hopes, their
conflicts."
Organizers say the Laguna Salada was selected as the setting in tribute to the city's early settlers. "Without anything, they founded this city in the
desert that has become one of the most important in Mexico," said developer P?rez Rom?n, is this the same guy as above, where accents are on his name?
one of the civic leaders who spearheaded efforts to bring Pavarotti to Mexicali.
"At least for us, the most important."
Mexicali's centennial committee originally extended an invitation to another famous performer, Placido Domingo, who sings with Pavarotti and Jos?
Carreras in the popular Three Tenors. But organizers said Domingo backed down after "complications with his throat" forced the performer to reorganize
his schedule.
Pavarotti, who plans to retire when he turns 70 in October 2005, agreed to the concert last year after examining videos and photographs of the Laguna
Salada and sending representatives to tour the site.
Pavarotti has sung in dramatic settings before, including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Acropolis in Athens, and in 1997 in southern Mexico, when he
drew 18,000 people to a concert in the Maya ruins of Chich?n Itz?. Jorge Esma Baz?n, artistic director of the Mexicali production, said it was then
that he broached the idea with Pavarotti about singing in a Mexican jungle or desert.
Organizers won't reveal how much they're paying Pavarotti, but they say the entire event is privately financed and costing $2.5 million to produce.
Any funds left over are earmarked for Mexican children in need of cornea transplants, suffering from cancer, or being served by the social service
branch of Mexicali's municipal government.
Pavarotti has a reputation for backing out of appearances. He caused a furor last year after he canceled his two performances at New York's
Metropolitan Opera House when he caught the flu. Just last month, an appearance by the tenor scheduled for Oct. 25 in Costa Rica was canceled.
But promoters insist that will not happen in Mexicali, and if he is unable to perform Oct. 18th, the agreement stipulates he will perform the
following night. "We have no doubt; we've never had a doubt," said Esma, the artistic director. "We've had a contract signed since a year ago, and
we've been in daily contact with his people for the past two months."
The physical challenges of the production are immense. The Laguna Salada has neither electricity nor water, and so they're trucking in the water and
planning to tap nearby electric lines to the site, about a half-mile from the four-lane highway that links Mexicali to Tijuana. Esma is hoping to
light up the Sierra Cucapah.
Security will be tight. The force will include more than 1,000 federal, state and municipal agents, as well as soldiers. And local government
officials have built seven lanes into the Laguna Salada to ease congestion on the day of the concert. Plans call for three heliports on the site,
though Pavarotti plans to arrive by car, organizers said.
Normally covered with a thin whitish crust of salt and dried mud, the basin's surface has been smoothed by massive machines to prepare for the chairs
and stage that will rise like a mirage in the desert, and dissolve just as quickly.
It will be an unforgettable night, organizers promise, one that their grandchildren will be telling their own grandchildren about decades from now.
And as darkness falls and the songs rise, they might think of the lines from a poem by Gabriel Trujillo:
"This city / is barely uttering / its first words."
Pavarotti set for Mexican swan song
Anonymous - 10-13-2003 at 09:16 PM
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/Entertainment/story_52361.asp
AFP - Opera star Luciano Pavarotti is due this week in Mexico, to perform his swan song before Mexican fans in a stretch of desert on the US border
where workers on Monday were building a $US2 million arena.
Organizers said the concert will be the last for Mexican fans before the 68-year-old Italian tenor retires in 2005.
Pavarotti is due to walk on stage Saturday before an audience of some 40,000 die-hard fans and celebrities.
Front-row seats have already been reserved by Hollywood stars Michael Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. Mexican lawmakers and business
leaders Carlos Slim and Emilio Azcarraga will fill out the front rows.
"Pavarotti without Borders" forms part of the centenary celebrations for the city of Mexicali, the capital of Mexico's western state of Baja
California.
Mexicali's symphonic orchestra will accompany the Italian star as will Mexico's Palace of Fine Arts choir.
Pavarotti is due to perform 18 arias as well as passages from La Boheme and other well-known songs from his repertoire. The opera star is due to
arrive here Thursday.
Organizers said it is "highly likely" that Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan and Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin will join the tenor on stage.
Some 4,000 workers are preparing a temporary stage and concert arena at a cost of some two million dollars in a picturesque stretch of desert close to
Mexicali in northwest Mexico.