Certain great artists are more than icons. A form like, say, film acting has many icons. I'm talking about artists (and athletes and other luminaries) whose names sum up their respective fields, sometimes singularly.

We all know who they are: they're the ones your friends, relatives and teachers teased you with, sometimes affectionately - sometimes not so...

When you wouldn't stop cracking wise in class: "All right, all right. That's enough out of you, Bob Hope."

When you first started getting the hang of the trumpet: "Well, listen to you, Louis Armstrong."

When you trip walking on to the dance floor: "Way to go, Baryshnikov."

When that piece of art you made really kind of kicks ass: "You're a regular Da Vinci."

What that poem actually sounds pretty good: "Say, you're another Shakespeare!"

When your performance in that play brought down the house: "Now how about that! You sure I shouldn't call you Laurence Olivier?"

And when you sing your lungs out in the shower - as we all still do - there's only one response: "Hey, hey, keep it down in there. Who do you think you are? Pavarotti?"

Luciano Pavarotti equaled opera in the public consciousness. Most of us - myself included - don't fully understand what we lost. But we know we lost something more than a tremendous voice.

That's why the treatment of Pavarotti's death by the television media made me sad. I'd made sure to tune into NBC's Today the morning after his death to watch the entirety of their first twenty minutes. This is the "hard news" section. The placement of, and time alloted to, each story reflects what NBC News thinks is important.

I'd hoped that they'd lead off with Pavarotti's death. Fifteen years ago they would have. Alas the first twenty minutes of NBC's Today was dominated by Fred Thompson (of NBC's Law and Order) announcing his candidacy on NBC's Tonight Show the night before. Hardly big news, since the announcement had been announced the week before. (NBC is relentless: this season expect Fred Thompson to show up as a character on Days of Our Lives, a judge on Bravo's Project Runway, and a model on Deal or No Deal.) Pavarotti's death was given the last two minutes or so. Not a retrospective. No interviews. Just a glorified bumper.

I held out hope that that night my pal Larry King would give it up for Pavarotti. Larry's audience is older, more likely to appreciate Pavarotti's place in the culture. Plus he'd interviewed Pavarotti. Perhaps he'd rerun the interview? But no. The hour was jam packed with updates on missing blond women. Larry ran a very short clip at the end of the hour.

This sounds like a very precious complaint, as if I'm swooning with indignation, my manservant daubing my brow, as I collapse onto my fainting couch. "Oh, Sebastian, what barbarism!"

But it does depress me that Paris' jail travails get top billing, when the death of a man who deepened and expanded us is an afterthought.

Of course the real victims are classical music journalists. They are an endangered species. Newspapers, where most of these reporters have worked, have been laying them off, replacing them (when reporters are replaced at all) with media writers.

This is why I've decided that I must help save The New York Times' Anthony Tommasini, the newspaper's chief classical music critic. He already lost a big subject with the July death of Beverly Sills, about whom he wrote beautifully. I've never met Tommasini but I'm convinced that his job is at stake with the death of Pavarotti. If a few more pillars in the classical music world croak, he's toast; he'll be replaced with someone who covers Chat Rooms or reviews YouTube clips.

To survive, It is imperative that Tommasini preserve the remaining Two Tenors, whatever the cost. They are his lifeblood right now. He should rush to the side of Placido Domingo. (Domingo is a bigger fish than Jose Carreras.) Begin monitoring his diet: a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet is a start. (I can't find the stat on Domingo's blood pressure, so I'll defer on sodium intake.) Make sure he sleeps and exercises - though remember, cardio is less important than anaerobic exercise at age 66. Happiness is important, too. Make sure he gets lots of sex. But not so much sex that it puts a strain on his heart. St. John's Wort and Airborne are also handy. As he gets older, a common cold gets dangerous.

If, in say 20 years, Carreras kicks it while you're offering life-support to Domingo, don't panic: The Weekend at Bernie's strategy works here. Just prop up Carreras. Domingo is loud enough for the both of them.

This is just a start. If anyone else has suggestions for how Anthony Tommasini can keep the Two Tenors alive, please weigh in. No scheme is too wacky. The survival of classical music journalism - and our appreciation of figures like Pavarotti - depends on it!

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Below is a very special comment that came in concerning the post above. It's from Liz:

Mo Rocca, mille grazie! for dedicating your blog space today to a tribute to the phenomenon we call Luciano Pavarotti and indeed to the survival of opera itself in the US.

We know what an amazing voice he had; his legacy is vast. He was too modest to ever acknowledge that his singing was anything more than a gift of god, but he worked at singing despite what some of his critics seemed to think.

His biggest concern always was that "she", his voice, would not show up for a performance. He was always conscious of not disappointing his audiences.

I was privileged to work closely with the Maestro at the Opera Company of Philadelphia when he held his four vocal competitions over a ten-year period in the 80s and 90s. I did public relations and English/Italian translations for his competitions. He often teased me mercilessly to lure me out of professional mode. Didn't work. When we were in interviews he sometimes get bored answering the same question over and over. He was so damned mischievous sometimes that he would pretend he didn't understand a question asked in English and then turn to me and in Italian tell me to make something up to tell the interviewer. He would always grin from ear to ear watching me squirm. The first few times I refused and shot the question back to him. But I got him good once and he never did it again: I told the Reuters interviewer that Pavarotti had invited him to up to his (luxurious) hotel suite to continue the interview over aperatives. He couldn't back down, so Pavarotti hosted us for another hour of interview! Exactly what he hated doing. He told the story of my outrageous defiance to everyone who would listen.

Yet I have the most amazingly vivid memories of how hard he worked with the young singers. Pavarotti was tireless on their behalf: rehearsals, voice exercises, repetition of vocal lines, posture, inflection, stage presence. Master classes really. But always the quest for excellence. He loved talent and loved to nurture it. The prize for all of his winners was singing onstage with him, in fact, he took about 20 of the winners to China to sing La Boheme for Chinese audiences. While there, he sang with a master of the Chinese opera in Beijing, dressing elaborately in gorgeous layers of silk robes and sashes, wildly colorful make up, enormous headdress, and banging on a huge gong while he imitated the pinched nasal tones of his Chinese counterpart in an effort to sing complimentarily. Breathtaking!

Pavarotti was unselfish and generous to his fans as well. The things I got him to sign, write notes on! The bazillion fans I arranged him to be photographed with! It was all, he would always say, to promote the love of opera. He was awed by the fact that when he appeared for the first time on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, more people saw him perform in just that night than saw the great tenor Enrico Caruso in his entire lifetime.

He was all about promoting opera, from the Three Tenors Concerts for mass audiences to the Pavarotti and Friends concerts with European stars to benefit children caught in wars and famine worldwide.

Funny, Mo, that you mention singing in the shower: at least once a day someone would say to him, "I can't sing very well, but I sound great in the shower." He would invariably say, "I sound best in the shower myself." If it was a woman he would always add, "Want to join me in a duet?" Corny as hell, but he actually loved hearing his voice in the shower and, of course, would take any opportunity to flirt shamelessly with a beautiful woman.

I could go on and on....there are so many wonderful stories that provide glimpses into the legend. It was so much fun, so much work, so much talent...did I mention so much work? But I loved my time with Luciano. (He insisted that he be called by his first name by his colleagues, but I wound up calling him Maestro most of the time.) I have been mentioned very generously in one of his memoirs in a chapter called "My Greatest Night in Opera". A wild ride of a dramatic story! Memories for a lifetime. And, yes, I kept a journal.

My heart broke when I heard last year of Pavarotti's illness; I wrote him twice to wish him well during his treatments and received typed replies personalized and signed by my erstwhile friend and colleague. Today is terrifically sad, but I was fortunate to spend the evening with friends and former colleagues here in Philadelphia singing, toasting and reminiscing. The stories were hilarious. Pavarotti was very playful and just a big kid. He would have loved our little party.

Since I knew his first wife Adua and his older two daughters a bit, I was invited by Pavarotti's family to his funeral today in Modena via a rather complicated email setup. I got my code to download my personal invitation just for the sake of it, but had to decline since getting there was impossible on such short notice. I think being there would have been a terribly emotional event for those who knew him.

If asked, I'd say his greatest legacy would be his voice, first, and his teaching, second, b/c the singers he tutored carry his technique and his unerring sense of the music into the future.

And I think the greatest tribute in the world to The Great One would be to listen and share opera with other music lovers in order to keep the love of opera alive.