Category: people

“She was always one of the most painfully personal of artists…. But finally the one part of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s life that has remained secret – at the orders of her former husband, fellow painter Diego Rivera – has been revealed in a new book published in Mexico. It tells the contents of a series of letters that Kahlo exchanged with her physician, and confidant, after she suffered a miscarriage in 1932, describing the devastation she felt when she realised that she could never have Rivera’s child.”

Playwright Sarah Ruhl “has a closet full of her grandmother’s clothes, many of which she has had for more than 15 years. … The longest lasting of these garments are six or seven well-made winter coats from the 1950s and ’60s. Her favorite is a nubby pink wool, which she has worn steadily since she filched it, as a defiantly Midwestern student amid the fashionably black-clad masses at Brown University, and all through her career as a playwright. ‘I like the color pink,’ she said. ‘I am tired of the color black.'”

“To meet him was not to suddenly enter the creative temple of a formidable, intimidating, dark and brooding genius who intoned complex insights with a Swedish accent about man’s dreadful fate in a bleak universe. It was more like this: ‘Woody, I have this silly dream where I show up on the set to make a film and I can’t figure out where to put the camera; the point is, I know I am pretty good at it and I have been doing it for years. You ever have those nervous dreams?'”

Russell Johnson was one of those rare people who didn’t just advance the thinking of those in his industry; he changed it forever. Before Johnson’s triumphant successes designing the acoustics of concert halls in Lucerne, Birmingham (UK), and Dallas, concert halls had become largely stale, dry affairs. “Johnson was an indefatigable self-promoter, sending positive reviews to newspaper critics with hand-scribbled notes, and could be quite charming.” And his work largely speaks for itself.

Conductor Robert Spano has always focused his career at home in America, rather than heading to Europe for early validation as so many Americans choose to do. But Spano is heading up the opening performance of the Edinburgh International Festival this week, and some are seeing it as his belated introduction to the other side of the Atlantic.

Luciano Pavarotti was reported in satisfactory condition after being admitted to hospital with a high fever in his hometown of Modena, Italy. Pavarotti, who was diagnosed with cancer last year, “is likely to be discharged in the next few days.”

Literary critic James Wood is joining The New Yorker after 12 years with The New Republic. “In some literary circles Mr. Wood has been described as a brutal critic who has blasted many of the country’s most admired writers, including Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon. He is also regarded as one of the most respected critics of his generation.”

“Dull as he pretends to be in a worn tweed jacket and conversational drone, [John] Adams has not been out of the headlines since 1987, when he became the first composer to put current affairs on the opera stage with Nixon in China… He is the artist to whom America turns to make sense of its confusions.”

“Russell Johnson, the acoustical consultant whose design for Dallas’ Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center helped revolutionized thinking about concert hall sound, died Tuesday at his home in New York. He was 83 and was on the job through Monday… In addition to the Dallas hall, Artec has been acclaimed for its work on the Culture and Congress Center in Lucerne, Switzerland; Symphony Hall in Birmingham, England; and many other facilities around the world.”

Singer and actor Florian Pittis, who became a beacon of hope to many Romanians living under the brutal Ceausescu regime, died Sunday at age 63. “His actual gestures of defiance may not look like much today. A word here, a song there – but for many, it was a sign of hope… His energy was legendary and magnetic. For a few hours, he gave you a taste of freedom.”