In opera, people spend a lot of time saying relatively little. It takes a four-minute aria for the young hero of Puccini’s “La Bohème” just to introduce himself to the pretty neighbor who’s knocked at his door.

Why do we wait?

Because this stretching of time, the refusal to just say it, opens up a space in which we’re forced to live — sometimes to the point of excruciation — with emotions that would normally pass in seconds. In that “Bohème” aria, “Che gelida manina,” it’s as if our heads are being held underwater in a pool of boyish longing, the endearing boastfulness of a guy with a crush. It’s sublime even as it — because it — skirts too-muchness, even tackiness.

Possibly no one in operatic history has been as sublime and as tacky as the subject of “Pavarotti,” a new documentary by Ron Howard that opens on Friday. The film, like an opera aria, forces us to linger on Luciano Pavarotti, a tenor who, 12 years after his death, remains beloved — and yet may be taken a little for granted.