When Luciano Pavarotti was six, the little boy who would one day become one of opera’s heavy-weights would climb onto the kitchen table, give the cue for the lights to be dimmed and sing La Donna E Mobile ,much to the delight of his whole family. As he took a graceful bow, doting aunts, a great-grandmother and a grandmother would applaud their little star, but none so enthusiastically as Adele, his mother.

And when she died last week the day before the world-famous tenor was to take the stage at Covent Garden, it was fitting that he should dedicate his performance to the woman who was always convinced of her son ’s talent and encouraged him to follow his arduous and at times uncertain career.

Adele, who died at the age of 86 after a long illness, never tired of recalling her son’s earliest performances as he emulated his singer father. “He was so cute,” she said some years ago. “He used to say, ‘My father is a big tenor and I am going to be a little tenor.’”

To read more about the enormous influence Adele had on Luciano’s life in an interview with the world-famous tenor, see this week’s issue of HELLO! magazine, on sale now.