“Gossett was widely respected as an authority on the operas of Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi, having served as general editor of the collected Rossini works and coordinating editor of the collected Verdi works.” The Rossini edition in particular was crucial to the modern revival of interest in the composer’s operas beyond the two or three in the standard repertory.
Category: people
David Wulstan, 80, Pioneer In Revival Of Tudor-Era Music
As a scholar, he reconstructed Thomas Tallis’s great Mass setting for Christmas, Missa Puer natus est, and much of the surviving music by John Sheppard, whome he saved from oblivion. As a musician, he founded the hugely influential choir The Clerkes of Oxenford, whose distinctive sound and performing style paved the way for world-famous ensembles The Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen.
Actress Glenne Headly Dead At 62
“[Her] acting career took shape at the renowned Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and found its biggest audience in Hollywood with films like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Dick Tracy … [She] moved easily from comedy to drama and from stage to screen. Not often cast in lead roles, she played her parts with a subtle, scene-stealing panache.”
Poet Edith Shiffert Dies At 101
“Ms. Shiffert was a quiet sensualist, her verse characterized by spare simplicity and a deep, abiding affinity with the natural world. Her poems were inclined to be short (she was keenly influenced by haiku), and were often organized around unobtrusive — and therefore highly effective — rhyme or half-rhyme, the prosodic device in which two words are united by a shared final sound.”
Carmen Ejogo Thinks She Got Popular Twenty Years Too Early, But Now She’s Peaking Again
She was a child star and had great success in her 20s, but then projects fell off. Now? “Ejogo’s choice of projects has often been limited by her race (she mentions that significant roles in period dramas and romantic comedies have been out of reach) but she’s embraced her love of genre films, which has led to something of an Ejogossance.”
Selma Hayek Is Getting Starring Roles At 50, But How?
Hayek says: “I have a friend — an Italian friend who’s a brilliant actress … she’s working a lot, too, and we were looking at each other one day and saying, why are we working so much? And she said: ‘You know why? We don’t have Botox!’ … We don’t have the injections. This is what it is! We don’t look as hot, that’s true … but we’re working non-stop because we can look like real people. We can play any part.”
The Decade Of Rachel Weisz
She almost wasn’t a movie star at all because as a student, she preferred the stage. “After Cambridge, she was confident her life in avant-garde theatre was set to continue, until the acting partner with whom she had set up a theatrical company decided to go to Rada and the thing fell apart.”
The Dungeonmaster In The Running At The Tonys
When the playwright J.T. Rogers (of Oslo fame) hangs out with his son, this is exclusive narrative he spins: “His characters, a dwarven king, a 12-foot-tall mountain giant and a half-elven chef, were not interested in brokering peace; they and their army were a bloodthirsty lot, with dwindling food stores, hellbent on conquering a nearby population of gnomes.”
Adam West, The Funny ‘Batman’ Of 1960s TV, Has Died At 88
West was both frustrated by the limitations of having played Batman and embracing of the humor of the show – though he didn’t like newer, dark versions of the Caped Crusader. “With its ‘Wham! Pow!’ onscreen exclamations, flamboyant villains and cheeky tone, ‘Batman’ became a surprise hit with its premiere on ABC in 1966, a virtual symbol of ’60s kitsch. The half-hour action comedy was such a hit that it aired twice a week on ABC at its peak.”
How Oskar Eustis Fell In Love With Theatre
“The counterculture of the early 1970s, when I was forging my independence, was a strange and often incoherent brew of politics, self-expression, spiritual seeking, gender fluidity and art-making. It was a heady time, and while it wasn’t exactly bliss to be alive, it was a time of remarkable possibility. It was also the time when I fell in love with the avant-garde theater.”