Category: people

Chinese writer Ba Jin has died in Shanghai. “Ba, a native of Chengdu, southwestern Sichuan Province, was recognized widely as one of China’s greatest literary masters and an outstanding publisher and editor. Ba went to study in France in 1926 and completed his first novel ‘Destruction’ there. He wrote numerous books, including novels, short stories, and essays, totaling some six million words.”

Playwright Dario Fo says he’ll run for mayor of Milan next year. “Mr Fo, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, wants to run for office in his home city next year. He is known for his left-wing stance in plays such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist and The Two-Headed Anomaly.”

“In his versatile and productive career, Harold Pinter, 75, has written plays and screenplays, directed theater productions, acted on screen and stage, and won awards across Europe. So precise and pared down is his prose, so artful his use of pauses and omissions to invoke discomfort, foreboding and miscommunication that he has his own adjective, Pinteresque, signifying a peculiar kind of atmospheric unease.”

Playwright Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize confirms his international stature as a great writer. “In Britain Pinter is ritually described as an ‘angry old man’. In the world at large he is seen as a great writer and champion of the oppressed. The gulf between the understanding and appreciation of Pinter at home and abroad is astonishing. Travel to virtually any country in the world and you will find a Pinter play in production.”

At the age of 70, Luciano Pavarotti is retiring. “Genius is a big word, which should be used carefully. Connoisseurs will never rate Pavarotti as the most elegant or subtle interpreter among tenors – they look to Carlo Bergonzi for that. Nor did he have a voice as romantically beautiful as the young José Carreras. Marvellous as his technique of vocal production was, I wonder whether he ever commanded quite the flexibility of the phenomenal Juan Diego Flórez. And for sheer versatility, musicianship, consistent excellence and shining nobility of soul, he can’t hold a candle to his great rival Plácido Domingo, who at 64 is still a force to be reckoned with. But Pavarotti had charm, and therein lay his genius.”

“Listen closely to the singing and to her guileless comments and what you hear is a soul adrift, a craft without oars of growth or self-defence heading into an abyss. It is a familiar phenomenon: the sweet child torn from schoolbooks to stardom, doomed to a lifetime of letdowns. It is the story of Judy Garland and Michael Jackson, of Yehudi Menuhin and Evgeny Kissin, of Mozart, Nadia Comaneci and any chess master you care to name. Ignore the achievements, mighty as they might be. Rare is the child who overcomes a great gift to enjoy its fulfilment in maturity.”

Chicago critic Hedy Weiss was barred at Broadway producer David Stone’s press event announcing the Chicago arrival of his latest show, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. “According to the Sun-Times, public relations executive Margie Korshak called Weiss to tell her she wasn’t welcome at the event. Weiss showed up anyway and was refused entrance. The paper also reported that, at the press preview-which was attended by reporters from the Chicago Tribune – Stone called out Weiss’ name and then said, ‘She can’t be here because she’s in detention’.”

It’s been six years since the brilliant young British playwright Sarah Kane committed suicide, and time has done nothing to diminish her impact on the UK’s theatre scene. But as is so often the case with artists struck down in their prime, the myth has begun to overtake the reality, and her entire output is frequently viewed through the lens of her final, desperate act. “Kane’s work wasn’t just some outpouring of the soul. It was immensely crafted… There’s a danger that we see all of [her] work as one long preparation for suicide. [Instead,] we should look at the plays as the work of a writer of great anger, of sardonic humour, who saw the cruelties of the world but also the human capacity for love.”

Kurt Vonnegut has never been exactly a cheery sort, and at 82, the celebrated author is the very picture of a curmudgeon. “He speaks repeatedly of having finished his life’s work and of the surprise of being still alive. And death is coming not just to him; in person and in the slim new volume of his collected recent essays entitled A Man Without a Country, Vonnegut pronounces a requiem for the Earth itself, saying the world is going to come to an end sooner or later, but most probably sooner.”

The Sydney Opera House is widely considered to be one of the more stunning feats of architecture ever conceived, but more than three decades after its completion, its creator has yet to see the inside in person. “It’s almost 40 years since [architect Jorn] Utzon turned his back on the Opera House, vowing never to set foot in Australia again. In 1966 he was eased off the project, and he was conspicuously absent from the building’s gala opening in 1973… [But] for the past decade, Utzon has been involved (by phone and fax) in a six-part, A$70m venue improvement programme for the Opera House.” The compromises forced on the project by the Australian government in the 1960s have been reversed, and for the first time, the Opera House will soon be exactly as Utzon first intended.