The Private Lives of the Three Tenors

The Private Lives of the Three Tenors is a gossip biography of tenors Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and José Carreras by Marcia Lewis, the mother of Monica Lewinsky. The book received high-level publicity during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal, as journalists compared Lewis' "hints" of an affair with popular opera singer, Plácido Domingo, to Lewinsky’s then-unproven allegations against U.S. President Bill Clinton. Domingo insisted that he only knew Lewis socially.

Media controversy over Plácido Domingo concentrated on an early publicity proposal that Lewis wrote for her book: "How did the author, a glamorous Beverly Hills reporter, formerly with Hollywood Reporter, get all the inside dope? She denies rumors she and Domingo were more than friends in the '80s but read the book and see what you think." Her publisher declined to use the proposal. However, soon before the book's release, the New York Post printed a somewhat graphic description of the Domingo rumor, which the paper indicated Lewis "sort of semi-denies."Newsweek staff reporters accused her of apparently starting the rumor herself.

The Washington Post quoted Lewis' publisher as saying that an additional three page "fantasy scene" of what a sexual encounter with the tenor might be like was removed from the final version of the book. The book's editor later recalled: "It was so jarring in relation to the rest of the book. It went from a third-person clip job to a weird romance novel kind of steamy scene. I took it out." In its place is a much pared-down, but nonetheless detailed description of what sort of lovers Spanish "hidalgos" like Domingo supposedly are.Newsweek noted, "It is impossible to know whether the [excised] scene was based on real life."El País, an important Spanish-language newspaper from Domingo's hometown of Madrid, less equivocally claimed in a headline: "Monica's mother invented a romance with Plácido Domingo."