Category: people

Out of prison and writing. “The disgraced Conservative politician has chosen Australia to launch his first novel since his release from prison in 2003, and he declared his comeback at a literary lunch in a plush hotel overlooking Sydney harbour in front of 410 avid fans.”

“At 60, after more than 2,000 performances with the New York City Ballet (and a few hundred with the Bejart Ballet), the dancer who now directs will receive the Kennedy Center Honors tonight, right across the street from the apartment she calls home.”

“Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein is battling leukemia at a New York hospital, a source close to her said yesterday. The Brooklyn-born writer’s condition was especially grave because an unspecified infection has prevented doctors from administering chemotherapy, the source said.”

“Dario Fo – at 79 still the most subversive man in Italy – wants to be mayor of Milan. The idea of an elderly anarcho-Marxist trying to take over the running of the country’s business capital might provide him with a splendid plot for a play. But this is for real.”

Playwright Harold Pinter has pulled out of giving a speech at his Nobel ceremony. “The Nobel Foundation said a lecture pre-recorded by Pinter will be shown on a big screen at their Stockholm academy on 7 December. The British playwright, 75, has been treated for cancer in recent years.”

“Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, churned out more than 250 books showing how the warm and fuzzy Berenstain Bears – Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister – confronted and learned from life’s little crises, died on Saturday in Doylestown, Pa. He was 82.”

One of South Africa’s best-known opera stars was shot to death by his father in an apparent murder-suicide yesterday. Tenor Deon van der Walt, 47, had performed in Salzburg, London, Zurich, and other top European opera houses, and was the first South African tenor to become an international success.

“A German archaeologist who earned a reputation for bravery after documenting damage to Iraq’s archaeological sites was abducted Friday in Iraq. Susanne Osthoff had been engaged in humanitarian work there.”

The pianist celebrates his birthday with a recital at Carnegie Hall. “That Mr. Wild can still play beautifully was clear during his recital in July at the Mannes College of Music. He was coming off quadruple-bypass surgery and operations on both eyes, and he needed a steadying hand to mount the steps to the stage. But once seated before his piano, he played through demanding works by Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin without so much as unbuttoning his sky-blue sport coat. Some of his passagework was sketchy, and he had lost some of his rhythmic bite. But his pianism still had plenty of verve, fluidity and grace.”

Welsh bass baritone Bryn Terfel says he may be taking a year off from opera. “Terfel reveals he may have a year free of the opera stage in 2008 to concentrate on some other projects. ‘The importance of opera is slipping from the diary and there may be a change in 2008. I want a year that’s clear of opera, to concentrate on concerts and radio and TV work’.”