Ron Howard’s intelligent and intimate love letter to the title operatic rock star is everything you’d want in a documentary about the life, achievements and loves of arguably one of history’s best and certainly most beloved tenors. It’s a tad hagiographic, but to be honest, this is all but inevitable. The man largely redefined the genre. 

If you don’t get chills, at least a little, when Pavarotti and fellow tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras absolutely nail “Nessun Dorma” at Rome’s Baths of Caracalla in 1990, maybe you should check yourself for a pulse.  

Howard plays it fairly conventionally, and while he doesn’t go into much detail about how the man developed his technique and talent, he makes up for it by including a lot of singing, which is after all what this is all about. Go see this film, even if you don’t care for opera.

(114 min)