Category: people

“Barshai studied composition with Dmitri Shostakovich and later recorded a complete cycle of his symphonies. He left his homeland in 1975 after Shostakovich’s death and went on to conduct in London, Paris and Berlin.”

While he composed the music for such shows as She Loves Me, Fiorello! and The Rothschilds, Bock is best-known for the score to Fiddler on the Roof, one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history. Bock’s passing comes 10 days after the death of his Fiddler colleague, librettist Joseph Stein.

“As an L.A. theater director, one of Robert Ellenstein’s most notable productions was his staging of Hamlet using only six actors and no props. He appeared in more than 20 films and many television shows.”

Since his first professional production, Somerset’s Maugham’s The Letter, which he directed in Windsor just two weeks after leaving Cambridge in 1953, he has never been out of work. “It is amazing to be able to say that in my profession,” he said a few years ago. “And I keep my voice down so the fates will not notice me.”

“He became a national hero after his story of survival in the Warsaw ghetto was immortalised in the Oscar-winning film The Pianist – but the wartime exploits of the late Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman are at the centre of a row following accusations, from beyond the grave, that he collaborated with the Gestapo.”

“Like an ancient proverb says: May you live in interesting times, or at least long enough to see Pee-wee Herman as a guest on the WWE Raw wrestling program.”

“[He] may not be a household name, but he is, for better or worse, one of the biggest celebrities in the art world. So why shouldn’t he get his own skin-care brand? The pop artist has recently lent his name to a limited edition Creme de Corps Holiday Collection, created by Kiehl’s. Each product in the series features Koons’ painting Tulips on its label.”

“There was also the touchy question of how to deal with newly highlighted claims that Mr. Godard, a master of modern film, has long harbored anti-Jewish views that threaten to widen his distance from Hollywood, even as the film industry’s leading institution is trying to close the gap.”

The director of the Oscar-winning documentary about the filming of Apocalypse Now, titled Heart of Darkness, was found dead in Denver, where he was attending a festival screening of his new film, Casino Jack, starring Kevin Spacey as lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

“Teaching has been a part of Mr. Vargas Llosa’s life, on and off, since the 1960s, when he had posts at universities in Britain, and later at Harvard, Columbia and Georgetown. He was a visiting lecturer at Princeton in 1992, returning this fall at the invitation of the Program in Latin American Studies.”