Italy:Luciano Pavarotti earned the last standing ovation of a glittering operatic career on Saturday afternoon when a recording of the great Italian tenor and his father Fernando singing César Franck's Panis Angelicuswas played during his funeral service in Modena cathedral.
Pavarotti died last Thursday, at the age of 71, after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.
As the unmistakeable Pavarotti voice faded, the cathedral congregation burst into a four-minute applause.
Outside in the Piazza Grande, thousands watching the service on a giant TV screen joined in.
Italy and Pavarotti's native town of Modena were paying tribute to a favourite son. In both the square and the church, some mourners wept quietly, dabbing their eyes.
Minutes later, the afternoon touched an emotional high point as Pavarotti's coffin was carried out of the cathedral.
As the large coffin was lifted into the waiting hearse, the Italian airforce's crack team of fighter jets, the "Fiamme Tricolore" flew low over the Piazza Grande, leaving a trail of tricolour smoke representing the Italian flag.
All of this was done to the accompaniment of what was perhaps Pavarotti's calling card, namely the Nessun Dormaaria from Puccini's Turandot, relayed across the square on the public address system.
Even the weather gods seemed to honour the memory of Pavarotti on a spectacular, sunny and warm September day. By midday, three hours before the funeral, many mourners were already in place, calmly taking the sun (or the shade) as they waited for the Big Event.
In the background and throughout the day, the public address played many of Pavarotti's most famous operatic recordings.
In the Cafe Concerto, just across the square from the cathedral, business was thriving. Inside the cafe, a grand piano stood lonely and unused beneath a huge banner, reading "Ciao Maestro". Modena being Modena, though, the Cafe Concerto remained open as the funeral service went ahead - business is business. Not for nothing are the modenesi a hardworking, thrifty and very affluent lot - after all they build the world's most exclusive sports car, the Ferrari, just down the road from here.
With a population of 170,000, Modena is a modest-sized place, the sort of town where people know one another well. For many of those at the funeral, Pavarotti was not some distant icon but rather a friend from childhood, or the "singer guy" who used to ring up and order steaks two fingers thick.
Pavarotti had often joked with undertaker Gianni Gibellini, telling him that it was better to invite him to dinner rather than call on his professional services.
In the end, the Gibellini firm was called on to work feverishly for two days to handle all the funeral arrangements.
Pavarotti had requested that mourners should not wear black, since he had not wanted a sombre sad day.
Some of the mourners took him at his word, most significantly his widow (and second wife), Nicoletta, who was dressed in green and grey.
Dancer Carla Frecci sported a splendid, flowing white outfit that ill-matched the tears running down her face. The great tenor himself was buried in a huge, white coffin lined with red touches, as requested by him, while the service programme card was a bright white document with blue rays that looked more suited to a wedding than a funeral.
Inside the cathedral, Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, singer Bono, cinema director Franco Zefferelli, conductor Zubin Mehta, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and tenor Andrea Bocelli were among those to attend.
In a brief address, much applauded in the piazza, the Italian prime minister drew attention to Pavarotti's many charitable works, saying: "I am here today to pay tribute to a man who used his wonderful voice as an instrument for peace.
"Thanks to his music, Pavarotti became an outstanding and passionate ambassador for Italy."
Earlier, the Archbishop of Modena, Benito Cocchi, who along with 18 priests presided over the funeral service, had read a telegram message from Pope Benedict XVI, who was on a pastoral visit to Austria: "The Holy Father wishes to express his condolences for the loss of a great artist who, with his extraordinary interpretive talent, honoured the divine gift of music."
The Italian media paid much attention to the positioning of mourners in the front row where Pavarotti's first and second wives, Adua Veroni and Nicoletta Mantovani, sat at either end of the same pew, without acknowledging one another and divided by their daughters by Pavarotti, namely Lorenza, Cristina, Giuliana by Adua and Alice by Nicoletta.
Already, media speculation suggests that Pavarotti's death is merely the prelude to a fierce battle over the huge wealth left by the singer, with many reports claiming that he changed his will at least once if not twice during his final year of terminal illness.
Throughout his 45-year-long career, Pavarotti was one of the most successful and highly paid opera singers in the world. His 1994 Three Tenors in Concertalbum, along with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, remains the best selling classical album of all time.
For those of us who were in Modena last Saturday, however, the day was not about the death of a wealthy icon.
It was a day when friends, fans and relatives alike said thanks for the memory of a wonderful talent.
As the soprano Raina Kabaivaska sang the Ave Mariafrom Verdi's Otelloand tenor Andrea Bocelli sang Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, it was hard not to be moved.
As Luciano Pavarotti sang Franck's Panis Angelicus, earning his last standing ovation, our tears flowed. Addio Maestro.