Lucio Dalla, Italian singer-songwriter, dies at 68

 music, obituary  2 Responses »
Mar 022012
 

, one of Italy’s most pro­lific singer-songwriters, died yes­ter­day in Switzer­land dur­ing a European con­cert tour.

Dalla, 68, appar­ently died of a heart attack in a Montreux hotel after eat­ing break­fast, accord­ing to his agency, Ph.D srl Music Man­age­ment, which is based in Dalla’s nat­ive city of Bologna, Italy.

Dalla had just given a con­cert Wed­nes­day even­ing in the Swiss city known for its music and “was in fine form,’’ said Pas­cal Pel­legrino, the dir­ector of Montreux’s “cul­ture sea­son.’’ Pel­legrino said the per­form­ance was warmly applauded and Dalla stayed on to chat with fans.

Dalla was the com­poser of Caruso (1986), which has been covered by numer­ous inter­na­tional artists. A ver­sion of Caruso sung by Luciano Pav­arotti sold over 9 mil­lion cop­ies, and another ver­sion was a track on Andrea Bocelli’s first inter­na­tional album Romanza, which later sold over 20 mil­lion cop­ies worldwide.

By Lucarelli (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wiki­me­dia Commons

South African soprano Elizabeth Connell dies at 65

 obituary, opera  No Responses »
Feb 202012
 

, who died of can­cer on Feb­ru­ary 18 at the age of 65, was “a ded­ic­ated artist with a pop­u­lar fol­low­ing who paced her career to per­fec­tion”, said The Guard­ian. Born in Port Eliza­beth, South Africa, she stud­ied in Bri­tain at the Lon­don Opera Centre and made her debut as a mezzo-soprano at Wex­ford as Var­vara in Kát’a Kaban­ová in 1972.

Con­nell was acclaimed for her per­form­ances of the great Strauss, Verdi and Wag­ner heroines. Following her debut at Wex­ford Opera Fest­ival in 1972, she sang at the open­ing of the Sydney Opera House in Prokofiev’s War and Peace in 1973, and con­tin­ued to have a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with Opera Aus­tralia.  Fol­low­ing a five-year asso­ci­ation with Eng­lish National Opera, she was a freel­ance artist with the major opera houses.

She appeared at the opera houses of Lon­don, Paris, Vienna, Ber­lin, Munich, Ham­burg, New York (Met­ro­pol­itan Opera), San Fran­cisco, Milan (La Scala), Naples and Geneva in a wide rep­er­toire and at the Bayreuth, Salzburg, Orange, Ver­ona and Glyn­de­bourne Fest­ivals.… con­tinue reading

Former New York City Ballet dancer is killed by two cars as she tried to help wounded animal

 ballet, obituary  No Responses »
Feb 142012
 

Former  dan­cer was hit by two vehicles and killed after get­ting out of her car in an appar­ent attempt to help a wounded animal.

Beth­une, 66, left her Lin­coln Town­car run­ning on Forest Lawn Drive and got out to help what turned out to be a dead opos­sum, said the . She was hit by an east­bound vehicle, then thrown into the oppos­ite lane, where she was hit by another vehicle that dragged her body more than 600 feet. She had severe head injur­ies and died at the scene.

Police have not iden­ti­fied the car that was involved in the second col­li­sion: the driver may have fled or may have been among the many drivers inter­viewed by invest­ig­at­ors at the scene.

Beth­une trained under and began dan­cing with the New York City Bal­let at age 14 des­pite suf­fer­ing from scoli­osis and lymphedema.

I was born to dance, in my heart, but not in my body,”

Beth­une told a Los Angeles Times reporter in 1999.… con­tinue reading

Whitney Houston, queen of pop, is found dead at 48

 music, obituary  2 Responses »
Feb 122012
 

Few pop sing­ers have been gif­ted with a voice as glor­i­ous as ’s, and even fewer have treated their tal­ent with the frus­trat­ing indif­fer­ence she did toward the end of her life. She sold more records and received more awards than almost any other female pop star of the 20th cen­tury, but spent most of her last years mired in a drug addic­tion that sapped her will to sing and left her in a sham­bolic state, said The Guard­ian’s obit­u­ary.

Con­vinced that she had what it took to be a block­bust­ing star, ’s influ­en­tial pres­id­ent, , per­son­ally over­saw the record­ing of her first album. He also turned up with her in 1983 on the Merv Griffin chat show, where she was intro­duced to the Amer­ican public. The singer was found unre­spons­ive at the Beverly Hilton Hotel hours before ’ annual pre-Grammy Awards party.

Hou­s­ton was gospel-trained, but her voice also lent itself to R&B, pop and bal­lads, and she was adept at each style. Her total record sales topped 170 mil­lion, put­ting her in an élite group of female super­stars that included Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, both of whom were heav­ily influ­enced by her emo­tional, vibrato-laden style.… con­tinue reading

Camilla Williams, the first black woman to appear in a leading role with a major US opera company, dies at 92

 obituary, opera  1 Response »
Jan 312012
 

, the first black woman to appear in a lead­ing role with a major US opera com­pany, aged 92. She made her debut in May 1946 in the title role of Madam But­ter­fly with the . Wil­li­ams’ debut per­form­ance came nearly nine years before Marian Ander­son became the first African-American singer to appear at New York’s more pres­ti­gi­ous .

The New York Times review of that per­form­ance said the singer dis­played “a vivid­ness and sub­tlety unmatched by any other artist who has assayed the part here in many a year”.

The fol­low­ing year she played Mimi and in 1948 she sang Aida. In 1951 she sang  in first com­plete record­ing of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Wil­li­ams became a strong sup­porter of civil rights. A life­time mem­ber of the National Asso­ci­ation for the Advance­ment of Colored People (NAACP), the singer per­formed in her homet­own of Dan­ville, Vir­ginia in 1963, to raise funds to free jailed civil rights demonstrators. She also sang the national anthem before 200,000 people at the 1963 civil rights march on Wash­ing­ton, imme­di­ately before gave his fam­ous I Have a Dream speech.… con­tinue reading

Rudi Van Dantzig, Dutch dancer, choreographer and writer, dies at 78

 ballet, news, obituary  No Responses »
Jan 212012
 

The Dutch bal­let dan­cer and cho­reo­grapher , one of the fam­ous names in the world of con­tem­por­ary dance, has died in a hos­pital in at 78 after a long ill­ness. He was born in August 4, 1933.

Rudi van Dantzig took up bal­let les­sons in 1950, at the rel­at­ively late age of 16, and in 1952 engaged him in her com­pany Bal­let Recital.

He cho­reo­graphed his first work, Nachteil­and, for the Neder­lands Bal­let, a com­pany that had grown from Gaskell’s Bal­let Recital. This was fol­lowed by the found­a­tion of the , under the lead­er­ship of Gaskell, where Rudi van Dantzig became res­id­ent cho­reo­grapher and in 1965 one of the three artistic dir­ect­ors. In 1971, he was the only one left and he remained sole artistic dir­ector of the com­pany until 1991.

Through­out his career, he cre­ated over fifty bal­lets, which are still reg­u­larly per­formed by com­pan­ies in the Neth­er­lands and all over the world.

… con­tinue reading

Pianist Alexis Weissenberg dies at 82

 music, obituary  No Responses »
Jan 102012
 

Bul­garian pian­ist has died aged 82.

Born into a Jew­ish fam­ily in Sofia, Weis­sen­berg began piano les­sons at the age of three with his mother, giv­ing his first pub­lic per­form­ance when he was eight. Bul­garian national radio repor­ted he died on Sunday in Lugano, Switzer­land after suf­fer­ing a long illness.

When he was 10, he and his mother attemp­ted to flee the rise of European fas­cism for Tur­key but were caught and sent to a concentration camp.

They were saved by the young child’s skill on an accor­dion which was a present from an aunt. A Ger­man guard who liked music let Weis­sen­berg play and after three months put the Weis­sen­bergs on a train to Istanbul.

He stud­ied at the Jer­u­s­alem Academy of Music and per­formed with the Israel Phil­har­monic under Leonard Bern­stein before enter­ing New York’s Juil­liard School of Music in 1946.

Weis­sen­berg spent 10 years tour­ing Europe and the US and, in 1956, moved to Paris where he would spend the next dec­ade study­ing and teach­ing.… con­tinue reading

Cheetah, chimpanzee star of Tarzan films, dies in Florida at 80

 obituary  No Responses »
Dec 282011
 

A chim­pan­zee who starred in Tar­zan films in the 1930s has died at the age of 80, accord­ing to the sanc­tu­ary where he lived. The Sun­coast Prim­ate Sanc­tu­ary in Palm Har­bor said he died on Sat­urday of kid­ney fail­ure. He had acted along­side Johnny Weiss­muller and Maur­een O’Sullivan in Tar­zan films from 1932–34. The animal loved fin­ger­paint­ing and watch­ing foot­ball, and was “soothed by Christian music”.

Sanc­tu­ary spokes­wo­man Debbie Cobb told the Tampa Tribune that Chee­tah came to live at Palm Har­bor from Johnny Weissmuller’s estate in about 1960. Chimpanzees in zoos typ­ic­ally live 35 to 45 years, she said. It is not clear what lay behind Cheetah’s longev­ity, or what evid­ence there is for it.

via BBC News… con­tinue reading

Oldest active actor and tenor dies at 108

 obituary, opera, theatre  No Responses »
Dec 262011
 

Dutch born actor and opera tenor  died Decem­ber 24 only a few weeks after his 108th birth­day. He was believed to be the old­est act­ive actor in the world.

He was born on Decem­ber 5, 1903 in Amers­foort, Neth­er­lands. Heesters deb­uted on the stage at the Volk­sop­ers (People’s Opera) in 1934 in Vienna; but made his mark on the stage dur­ing the 1930s in Ber­lin – some­thing he was later har­assed about – where he was a favour­ite of theatre goers at the Kimis­che Oper and Admir­alspalast. He con­tin­ued to be a pop­u­lar per­former in Ger­many well into his old age; con­tinu­ing to per­form well past 100. Heesters said that sit­ting around wait­ing for life’s aches and pains was wrong and life was meant to be lived.

Although Heesters was will­ing to ply his trade in Nazi Ger­many, he was never accused of spread­ing pro­pa­ganda. But his fel­low coun­try­men in the Neth­er­lands thought Heesters irre­deem­able, it would be 44 years before the actor would again per­form in his nat­ive land in 2008.… con­tinue reading

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