The opera star Luciano Pavarotti was seriously ill at his home in Italy last night after his kidneys failed and he lost consciousness, an Italian television station reported. Pavarotti, hailed by many as the greatest tenor of his generation, underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer last year. A local television station in his home town of Modena, Antenna Uno, said the singer was surrounded by members of his family and close friends.

AGI news agency cited sources as saying the 71-year-old opera star was in a "very serious condition". In a dispatch from Rome, the agency said he was being attended to at home by cancer specialists.

Pavarotti - often described as the greatest tenor since Enrico Caruso - was released from the Policlinico hospital in Modena on August 25, after more than two weeks of tests and treatment.

He was taken to the hospital on August 8, suffering from a high fever and respiratory problems.

The reported deterioration of his condition came the day after Italy's culture minister had awarded him a newly-created prize for his contribution to the arts. Pavarotti was the first recipient and no date was set for an award ceremony.

Announcing the honour, Francesco Rutelli, who is also a deputy prime minister in Italy's centre-left government, described the opera star as "currently waging a mighty battle against illness with the same determination with which he established himself in the world".

The singer, who has helped to give opera a new, mass audience, underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer at a New York hospital in July 2006. Before the operation he had been planning to resume his farewell tour. Since undergoing surgery, however, he has made no public appearances and has had at least five courses of chemotherapy.

He made his debut as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Boheme at Reggio Emilia in 1961 and reached the first great peak in his career in 1972, when he received 17 curtain calls at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from an audience that heard him hit nine high Cs.

But it was the 1990 football World Cup that transformed him into a global celebrity, with a fame that extended far beyond opera houses. His spine-tingling interpretation of the Puccini aria Nessun Dorma, the competition's theme song, was a worldwide hit.

On the eve of the final, Pavarotti joined Plácido Domingo and José Carreras in the first of the immensely successful Three Tenors concerts. His "popera", which led him into performances with Sting and U2, appalled purists, but demonstrated to millions that classical singing could be as thrilling as pop or rock.

Like many a great singer before him, Pavarotti combines a sublime voice with an exasperating temperament which has earned him the title of the "king of cancellations".

In 2003, he married his secretary, Nicoletta Mantovani, after the collapse of a 34-year marriage to his first wife, Adua Veroni. He has a daughter by his second marriage and three by the first.

On Tuesday, La Scala opera house in Milan announced it would join a theatre in Modena in organising an international competition for young opera singers dedicated to the tenor. In a statement, La Scala said the contest would be a chance "to pay tribute to the career of Luciano Pavarotti, a symbol of Italian music in the world".

Life and times

Born in Modena, Italy in 1935, the son of a baker, Luciano Pavarotti's passion was for football. He had wanted to pursue a career as a professional player, and it was not until he was nine that he first got a taste for singing. He was involved in the town chorus with his father, a fine tenor, Pavarotti later explained, but who had given up the possibility of a singing career because he suffered from nerves.

After completing his teacher training and working at an elementary school for two years, Pavarotti decided to study singing. While studying, he became aware that he had perfect pitch. "Everything I had learned came together with my natural voice to make the sound I had been struggling so hard to achieve," he said later.

His professional debut was in April 1961, as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Boheme at the opera house in Reggio Emilia, and he went on to perform in Amsterdam, Vienna, Zurich and London. His breakthrough performance in the US was in 1972 where he achieved nine high C's in the signature aria of Donizetti's La fille du régiment and had 17 curtain calls.

International fame beckoned when he joined forces with José Carreras and Plácido Domingo and they performed a series of concerts during the World Cup in 1990. The subsequent record became one of the biggest selling classical albums.

His concert in Hyde Park in London drew a record attendance of 150,000. He gave his final performance in an opera in Puccini's Tosca in New York in March 2004.

Lee Glendinning