The mayor and the tenor: when Masloff met Pavarotti

By almost every measure, Sophie Masloff was different from every other Pittsburgh mayor.

Masloff’s 2014 New York Times obituary was a greatest hits of stories about her that Pittsburghers had shared for years. Some of the most infamous were Masloff’s malapropisms: “The Who became ‘the How.’ It was ‘Bruce Bedspring’ and ‘the Dreadful Dead,’” the paper wrote.

With only a high school education and social graces better suited for an Atlantic City gambling junket on a chartered bus (she did those) than a White House state dinner, Masloff became one of the city’s most colorful characters.

In September 1990, Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti performed at the Civic Arena with the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra. He had cut short a 1989 performance because of a sore throat and had returned to the city to satisfy fans who had bought non-refundable tickets for the first gig.

That evening, Pavarotti and Pittsburgh luminaries caught the show and they dined and danced. The photo that Pittsburgh City Paper used in our piece about Masloff’s untold family story was taken that evening.

Tom Jayson, Pittsburgh’s disco king and one of the city’s most prolific 20th century entertainment promoters, was one of the people responsible for arranging Pavarotti’s Pittsburgh trips.

Jayson spent much of the evening with the mayor and was sitting with Masloff during Pavarotti’s performance. “It’s already like 8:30, 9 o’clock, and the thing started at eight,” Jayson recalls. “And she says, ‘Tom, I’m really hungry. I didn’t have any lunch. Is there any food anywhere?’”

The promoter told her to stay put while he went to locate some food.

All the concessions were closed and Jayson ended up going to one that was open for arena employees. “I get pizza, I get hot hotdogs. I get hot sausage, soft pretzels. That’s all they had,” Jayson says. “She’s chomping down. Now in back of us are the Scaifes and the Mellons. I could hear them talking, ‘That’s disgusting. Pavarotti’s singing and people are eating hot dogs and shit.’”

As for the dance with Pavarotti captured in the photo? It almost didn’t happen.

“We go over to eat and she says to me, ‘Tom, I have one last request … Will I have a dance with Pavarotti, and could someone take a picture?’”

In Jayson’s telling, opera director Tito Capobianco had warned him that Pavarotti was infamous for making quick exits. “You gotta keep an eye on him,” Jayson says Capobianco told him.

“And sure as shit, I look up, [Pavarotti] was going out the door and then I run,” Jayson recalls. “I said, ‘Pavarotti, dance with the mayor.’”

The rest is history.

This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2024.