Luciano Pavarotti is dead. Why does this resonate? Because the life of Pavarotti is an allegory for our time, our decadent decline made flesh.

Here was a man blessed by talent, art and beauty who was consumed by vanity and the dumb blandishments of vapid celebrity. A man gifted with an abundant natural resource – a larynx touched by God he thought – a creature of incalculable, classical, learned beauty that ended up stuffing itself with lard and singing duets with Bono.

This is our age on legs: cancer laden, caked in hair dye, fake tan and kohl, still sort of singing. Then dead. RIP.