Herbert Breslin, Pavarotti Publicist and Manager, Dies Herbert Breslin, the brash publicist and manager who helped fashion a supremely gifted tenor named Luciano Pavarotti into a superstar but who later wrote a biting memoir about their 36-year relationship, died on Thursday in Nice, France. He was 87. His son, Eric, said Mr. Breslin had died of a heart attack while traveling. Mr. Breslin drove hard bargains, pestered opera impresarios and journalists, and worked mightily to build the career of Pavarotti. In his book "The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary" (2004), written with Anne Midgette, Mr. Breslin paid tribute to Pavarotti's sometime generosity and charisma and especially his ringing tenor voice, which he said gave him goose bumps every time. "It was just so damn beautiful," he wrote. But the book also gives off a whiff of sour grapes. It paints an unpleasant portrait of Pavarotti in the flush of his later success, when Mr. Breslin's influence receded. It describes him as vain, lazy and tightfisted, with outsize appetites for money, women and food. In one instance Mr. Breslin wrote of "the potentate on the throne backstage at an arena concert, hair sloppily colored jet black, snapping his fingers to command a member of his entourage to bring him his preperformance consommé." Mr. Breslin had maintained a deep love of opera since he was 8, when his father, an insurance man, took him to his first performance. It was "Carmen" at the old New York Hippodrome. "The beauty, the glamour, the excitement and the tremendous voices pulled me into another world," he wrote. In turn, he pushed opera into another world. Under Mr. Breslin's care, Pavarotti was the first opera singer with a major appearance at Madison Square Garden. He gave rock concert-style appearances in other arenas, showed up on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Tonight Show," made television commercials, was mobbed at airports and starred in a movie, "Yes, Giorgio." Mr. Breslin claimed credit for turning the opera world's attention from divas to a tenor. "I brought that tenor out of the opera house and into the arms of an enormous mass public," Mr. Breslin said in the book. The move made both men, who shared humble origins, rich. Ronald A. Wilford, who as chairman and chief executive of Columbia Artists Management often matched his artists with Mr. Breslin, said Mr. Breslin understood that Pavarotti "was not just another tenor, but a unique tenor and personality." Mr. Breslin's other publicity clients in the early years included Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne. He was instrumental in bringing the pianist Alicia de Larrocha to attention in the United States and helping her build her recording career. He put his philosophy this way: "Marketing an artist is basically like marketing a bar of soap," adding that publicity is a waste "if it doesn't mean higher fees, if it doesn't mean more money in your pocket." At its bottom, he said, classical music is a business. "Everyone is in it for the money," he said. While his edges may have been rough, many artists, even those who tussled with him, recognized his skills and how much he fought for his clients. "Herbert Breslin was a very hard man, but he knew the pot of gold in every entertainer" he worked for, the soprano Carol Vaness said in an interview. One who disagreed was Renée Fleming, who said Mr. Breslin once told her that she would never make it without singing "bread-and-butter Italian opera." She didn't, and made it anyway. Unexpectedly, Pavarotti's biggest financial success, the Three Tenors phenomenon of the 1990s, was not Mr. Breslin's doing. Other impresarios orchestrated it. "I wish I had," Mr. Breslin said. By then, he said, his relationship with Pavarotti was changing from that of collaborator, friend and adviser to foil and buffer. Herbert Breslin was born on Oct. 1, 1924, and raised in the Bronx. After Army service in World War II, he received a degree in business administration from City College. He held various jobs, including teaching high school, before becoming a speechwriter for the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit, where he learned the rudiments of public relations. He married Carol Gluck, who survives him, along with his children Andrea Breslin-Jaffe and Eric, and four grandchildren. Mr. Breslin, who had homes in Paris and Manhattan, said he met Pavarotti in 1967, when the singer was in New York covering for Carlo Bergonzi in a Carnegie Hall performance of Verdi's Requiem conducted by Herbert von Karajan. An executive of Pavarotti's record company, London, suggested that he call Mr. Breslin to do publicity. According to Mr. Breslin, the two men met in a taxi heading from Carnegie to the airport. "We hit it off right away," Mr. Breslin wrote. And I signed him up. Years later, Pavarotti said he needed a "tough guy" to protect him and made Mr. Breslin his manager because they were "very much synchronized." "Every time he offered me something to do, I very much liked it," Pavarotti said in a 2003 interview quoted in "The King and I." As to whether he could have had his career without Mr. Breslin, Pavarotti said the question was unanswerable. He pointed out that he had helped create Mr. Breslin's career. "Herbert," Pavarotti said, "was my wife in the opera."