Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown – Its A Man’s Man’s Man’s World (Live 2002)

Soul and bel canto collide in Modena, 2002

When James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” met Luciano Pavarotti’s stage in Modena, the result was less crossover gimmickry than a controlled detonation. Brown’s 1966 lament—part sermon, part torch song—arrived with its familiar ache intact, but the setting shifted the drama: a full orchestra beneath, an arena of charity-concert fervor around, and the world’s most famous tenor stepping into the frame. It was the kind of high-wire pairing Pavarotti’s annual benefit shows specialized in, placing elemental voices in shared space and letting the contrasts spark.

The reading leans into the song’s built-in theater. Brown testifies with the grain and rasp that made the record endure, stretching lines, punching syncopations, commanding the stops and surges as if riding a live band in a club. Opposite him, Pavarotti answers with a new Italian verse and ringing top lines that recast the melody as grand aria. The orchestra swells and recedes like a tide between them: strings holding a slow burn, brass answering Brown’s shout, percussion tightening the screws before release. Rather than smoothing differences, the performance stages a conversation—soul’s improvising preacher meeting opera’s sovereign projection.

Context mattered. The duet closed ranks around the concert’s humanitarian purpose while acknowledging the song’s complicated gender stance; heard here, its refrain turns from possession into plea. Where the 1966 studio cut isolates a single narrator, the Modena setting multiplies perspectives: Brown’s stagecraft—glissandos, growls, the side-eye to the band—meets Pavarotti’s open-throated bloom, and the orchestra binds the two with cinematic scale. The audience roars at each handoff, a call-and-response writ large.

Production details sharpen the edges. An orchestral chart leaves space for Brown’s rubato phrasing and for Pavarotti’s climactic ascents, with tempo held just loose enough to breathe. The camera work (in official releases since) captures touchstones: Brown cueing the hits with a flick of the wrist; Pavarotti fixing the hall with a single sustained note; both men sharing the final cadence like a negotiated truce. It is a performance built on trust—of song, of craft, of the moment’s stakes.

Legacy followed quickly. The duet became one of the most replayed passages in the Pavarotti & Friends canon, a proof that amplification does not require dilution. It reframed a soul standard without sanding away its grit, and it showed how a voice born for Puccini could stand beside the Godfather of Soul without crowding the light. What remains is the shock of recognition: two distinct traditions, neither compromised, meeting on common ground and making the old song sound newly urgent.

Line-up: Luciano Pavarotti — tenor; James Brown — vocals;
Orchestra Sinfonica Italiana — orchestra; José Molina — conductor and arranger.
Live at Parco Novi Sad, Modena, Italy; 28 May 2002.
Event: Pavarotti & Friends for Angola.