Luciano Pavarotti soon to croon in Las Vegas

Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1998 | 9 a.m.

They'll all be in Las Vegas this spring at the new Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino.

Pavarotti, 63, will transpose his iffy high Cs into a crooner's higher fees on April 10 at the hotel's 12,000-seat events center, with a medley of songs and lots of violins.

It shouldn't be a hardship to sing at the $950 million, 3,700-room complex on The Strip being built by Circus Circus Enterprises Inc.

"Tropically themed with mystical architecture and lush surroundings" is how producer Tibor Rudas describes the venue he booked for the legendary opera singer.

In past years, the King of the High Cs, who made opera popular for the masses, has drawn hundreds of thousands of people to such venues as Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and New York's Central Park. This will be his first appearance in Las Vegas in more than a dozen years.

Although Pavarotti's New York manager, Herbert Breslin, denies the singer is retiring from fully staged opera, his client canceled three appearances in the Metropolitan Opera's "Tosca" this fall. A much slimmed-down Pavarotti did make it to his only operatic appearance this season, the 30th anniversary of his Met debut, on Nov. 22.

There's no question pop music is drawing him more each year. On "Pavarotti and Friends," which airs Wednesday on PBS, he sings with the Spice Girls and Stevie Wonder. One number is called "Viva Forever."

It seems that the tenor with the velvety voice plans to have a long stage life, despite both hip and knee replacements last summer and high Cs he can no longer count on.

But he is counting on "the possibility to be asked to sing everywhere," he said recently, flipping through an appointment book with engagements from Berlin to Beirut and Bucharest.

They're likely to be lighter on his voice - and add weight to his bank account.

Ticket prices for the one-night Mandalay extravaganza start at $50 and peak at $450. That beats the Met, where stage-center orchestra on a Saturday night goes for $160. Or, for $12, you can stand to hear Pavarotti.