I wanted to patronise my 15yo brother by asking him whether he knows who is Pavarotti. I was expecting an answer like "Do you think i'm stupid"?, but he just replied by saying "who? is he a magician?". I then asked "but you know who Eminem is?" and he said duuuh of course.

I'm gobsmacked and sad . I've always knew of Pavarotti, even as a child i knew who he was and what a great voice he had.

Yep, I always knew of him even as a kid. I'm not into opera or classical music at all but he was quite famous so I knew a bit about him. Was pretty sad when he died

I know who Pavarotti is, he was a great singer, one of my great-nan's favourites, it always reminds me how after he died my nan declined strangely enough. I'm 15 by the way.

It's maybe not too surprising that he hadn't heard of Pavarotti, in this day & age. However, it's also quite disturbing. Pavarotti was never my favourite, but I particularly enjoyed his Duke in Rigoletto, a role in which I felt he greatly excelled. You could direct him to Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's film version from 1982 with the VPO under Chailly, an excellent romp.

I grew up knowing who Pavorotti was but it's probably not hard for a young person of today to block out stuff that just doesn't interest them. It's a bit sad, granted, but not the end of the world. There was a lot of stuff I didn't know about when I was a teen because I just didn't give a ****.

Well why should he know who he is? If your brother is 15, then that means that he was 12 when Pavarotti died, which also means your brother would have been about 1-5 years old when pavarotti was in his commercial prime. It's not that unreasonable he didn't know who he was , especially as pavarotti is not the same type of musical legend as The Beatles or Elvis Presley.

WHAT!!!

ok...

OP:

Yes, massive fan. Also had tickets to see him in Glasgow in 2006, alas he became too ill then of course died.

Pavarotti was probably the most famous singer in the world during 8th June to 8th July 1990 when Nessun Dorma was played everywhere!

No, I mean OBVIOUSLY pavarotti IS a musical legend, but he isn't discussed as regularly as The Beatles and Elvis on tv shows/general discussion that a 15 year old would be surrounded by.

Oh ok, i was getting my whip ready

and yeah, i would've thought he had heard of him in school from friends or teachers or somewhere because throughout my life, everyone knew the name at least. Oh well, i will just have to live with it