ROME (AP) – Luciano Pavarotti has no intention of letting the curtain fall on his singing days despite 70 years of age and recent surgery for pancreatic cancer, the tenor said from New York in an interview published Monday.

“I have every intention of returning to singing,” Pavarotti told La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper, speaking from his New York home.

“I want to finish my tour. I can’t give precise dates because I’ll have to discuss it with the doctors, but I think I’ll start again next year,” he said.

The famed performer was preparing to leave New York earlier this month to resume a farewell tour when doctors discovered a malignant pancreatic mass – a kind of cancer that is often considered a death sentence.

He underwent surgery in a New York hospital, and all his remaining 2006 concerts were canceled.

Because pancreatic cancer is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage, it has one of the worst prognoses of all types of malignant growths. But Pavarotti’s cancer was contained and doctors were able to surgically remove it, offering improved odds for survival, according to cancer experts.

“In misfortune I was quite lucky,” Pavarotti told the Turin-based La Stampa a few hours after returning home from the hospital.

“Better, better, better,” Pavarotti said when asked how he was feeling. “I’m finally at home, my home, finally out of the hospital. What can I say? It’s a marvelous feeling.”

At an age when most tenors are long retired, the native Italian’s infrequent performances in recent years capped a four-decade career at the pinnacle of the music industry.

He took advantage of the television age to become a widely marketed artist – especially as one of the Three Tenors alongside Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras. When he retired from staged opera in 2004, he kept his concert career and undertook a farewell tour.

The tenor has kept a residence in New York – where he made his Metropolitan Opera debut on Nov. 23, 1968, in Puccini’s “La Boheme” – but he told La Stampa he would to return to Italy to continue his recovery.

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