ROME - Luciano Pavarotti, who is battling pancreatic cancer, is working on a recording of sacred songs, the tenor's manager said Tuesday.
"He's very positive," said his London-based manager Terri Robson in a telephone interview. Pavarotti's work on the recording of classical religious music should be finished by the end of August or September, Robson said, and the recording should be available to the public in early 2008.
The 71-year-old opera great is also "teaching every day," working with a group of students he selected for study, she said.
An Italian women's magazine Diva e Donna on Tuesday quoted one of Pavarotti's daughters, Giuliana, as saying that her father "knows he will die soon." The article originally appeared in a German magazine, Bunte. But Robson contended that Giuliana Pavarotti's comments were taken out of context.
She is "horrified" that "her words were twisted," Robson said.
The manager said she had spoken with the tenor about an hour earlier to let him know about the Italian magazine article and that "he just laughed about it."
Pavarotti "said he is feeling stronger," and he is dividing his time this summer between his home in his home town of Modena, where he is working on the recording, and his villa in the Adriatic seaside resort of Pesaro.
In Pesaro, he has been swimming in the villa's pool with his youngest daughter, three-year-old Alice, Robson said.
Pavarotti was preparing to leave New York in July 2006 to resume a farewell tour when doctors discovered a malignant pancreatic mass. He had surgery.
The tenor retired from staged opera in 2004.
