Women Affairs

The widow of opera star Luciano Pavarotti has sued two friends of the late tenor for 30 million euro ($50 million), claiming their comments about her marriage were defamatory, her lawyer said. Nicoletta Mantovani filed the lawsuit last month after warning that speculation about the state of her marriage to Pavarotti would not be tolerated, her lawyer said. Pavarotti died on September 6 of pancreatic cancer at age 71. Soon after, friends close to the tenor told Italian media he had been unhappy in the marriage, and Mantovani was fighting his grown daughters from an earlier marriage over his estate. "Since the comments did not cease - and were, in fact, reiterated - Mantovani had no choice but to file the lawsuit," lawyer Anna Maria Bernini said, confirming weekend reports in the small daily L'Informazione, based in Pavarotti's hometown of Modena. "She is doing it to protect her sense of respectability - privately for the sake of her daughter and the memory of the ...

Nicoletta Mantovani, Luciano Pavarotti's widow has spoken out saying she hoped a media furor over the late opera star's inheritance would soon be over and insisted the tenor was in no way mentally impaired when he made his final will. In a TV interview Nicoletta Mantovani, the singer's second wife, 34 years his junior, said she had no quarrel with his three daughters from his first marriage who are older than herself -- the subject of media speculation since Pavarotti's death last month. Italian media have speculated that Pavarotti signed his last will, leaving his US assets including a New York apartment to her, while too sick to know what he was doing. An Italian magistrate has said he may look into the press reports. The trust controlling Pavarotti's US assets is reported to be worth 15 million euros. His total fortune is estimated at up to 300 million euros ($431.1 million). In her first interview since Pavarotti died of pancreatic cancer aged 71, Mantovani said...