Pavarotti Paints

Who gave Luciano Pavarotti a “paint-by-numbers” kit and told him he was Rembrandt (“By Pavarotti (After Hicks),” Jan. 20)? Once again some vainglorious megalomaniac has fallen for his own press-puffery clippings and fancies himself a master at all he attempts.

When someone who already has so much talent, fame and wealth can pathetically rip off an old woman of modest means--a woman who felt privileged to have been able to go to Europe three times in her life--because he “wanted to become a painter, a famous painter,” that is no aspiration of the noble human sort; that is simply human greed.

LINDA G. NEARING

Rancho Palos Verdes