Luciano Pavarotti’s adult daughters complained Tuesday night about media reports claiming they are squabbling with the late tenor’s second wife.
They also said they were not aware that their father made any changes to his will as he neared death after a long bout with pancreatic cancer, as reported by some.
“We know that in Italy, as elsewhere, false news and idle inferences that involve us are coming out. This is causing us bitterness,” Cristina Pavarotti said, reading a statement on Italian state television that she said contained the views of herself and her two sisters.
The statement from the three daughters of the opera star and his first wife, Adua, denounced the press for “feeling the need to speculate on purported bickering, phantasmagoric wealth, last wills and testaments that we don’t know anything about.”
State TV said the women were angered by stories in Italian and British newspapers saying that they are quarreling with Pavarotti’s second wife, Nicoletta Mantovani, with whom he had a young daughter, and that their father had “hidden wealth.”
Among the reports since the 71-year-old Pavarotti’s death Thursday was one in the Turin daily La Stampa saying the tenor reportedly wrote a new will a couple of weeks ago.
State TV said part of the sisters’ statement that was not read on the air indicated Pavarotti’s will would be opened in a few months.
“The death of papa for us has been, like for all those who lose a parent, a lacerating tear,” Cristina Pavarotti said in reading the statement.
She said the sisters had been helped in coping with their sorrow by the “demonstrations of sincere love and extreme respect” for the singer that poured in from every part of the world.
Tens of thousands of fans filed past Pavarotti’s open coffin in the cathedral of Modena, his hometown, and opera and pop stars joined Italian politicians at his funeral Saturday.
“It was a moment of great sharing, for which we are full of gratitude,” the sisters’ statement said. “Now the time of mourning really begins.”