Category: people

“He has never actually laid eyes on the finished product, but the creator of the Sydney Opera House has been serenaded in Australia on his 90th birthday.” Jorn Utzon quit the Sydney project 8 years in over budget disputes. The birthday serenade took place beneath one of the opera house’s famous white sails.

The descendants of Richard Wagner are generally reluctant to discuss their familial links to Adold Hitler and the Third Reich. But then, there’s Gottfried Wagner. “Gottfried became ashamed of being both German and a Wagner,” and has no problem explaining why.

“Bulgaria’s Georgi Stoev, the author of crime stories who died after he was shot in the head in downtown Sofia, feared for his life because of the books he wrote, publisher Nedyalko Nedyalkov said. ‘Georgi was murdered by his characters,’ Nedyalkov declared Tuesday in an interview for Nova Television.”

“Charlton Heston, who died Saturday at age 84, was an avid newspaper reader, eager to share his opinions. In addition to writing dozens of letters to the paper over four decades, the ‘Ben-Hur’ star often would telephone Los Angeles Times editors with his comments.” Here’s a sampling from his missives.

“Simon Michael Bessie, who in 1959 left a top editorial position at what was then called Harper & Brothers to help found Atheneum Publishers, perhaps the last major literary house to be started from scratch in the 20th century, died on Monday at his home in Lyme, Conn.”

“Charlton Heston, who has died at the age of 83, became known for his reactionary views on gun ownership as much as his film roles. But it wasn’t always that way… There was once a younger Charlton Heston who threw his fame and good looks behind the civil rights movement, and other causes that required courage and conviction.”

“With million-selling albums and countless tours under her belt, Laurie Anderson is often still regarded as the kooky, spiky-haired queen of 1980s pop experimentalism, guaranteed to provide a little social comment but never to spark actual outrage.” So even she was taken aback when her latest project sparked walkouts and catcalls in Boston.

The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners are …

“Oscar Wilde, it seems, is our contemporary. He died in Paris 108 years ago, a near-friendless exile, impoverished, shunned, disgraced. Today, he is world-famous and universally admired… He would not have quarrelled with the attention: he was a pioneer of celebrity culture.”

“No other music sounds quite like his, with its mystical allure, ecstatic energy and elusive harmonic language, grounded yet ethereal… Messiaen’s musical language blithely juxtaposes piercing astringencies with lushly sonorous diatonic harmonies, and with Impressionistic chords in homage to his beloved Debussy that can make a Messiaen orchestra sound like a cosmic big band.”