Category: people

“A Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, Marlette was also a comic strip writer, novelist, librettist — and a Southerner through and through. Not the calm, genteel, conflict-averse kind of Southerner, mind you. He was a prickly pear, a stubborn and restless rebel. With countless causes.”

“It’s worth remembering how much Wisconsin there was in the voice of John Szarkowski, who died on Saturday at age 81. His reputation would almost make you doubt what you were hearing. He was, after all, the curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art for 29 years, beginning in 1962. … I’m struck now by the essential modesty of that other place — the common-sensical view Szarkowski took of his curatorial work and his work as a photographer.”

“Sills took her work far more seriously than she took herself. She sang each role with total devotion, but also with a smile that communicated a subversive thought: What makes opera magical also makes it a little silly. Sills gave the impression that she could don the tiara, plunge into her tragic scena, then sweep offstage on a flood of applause and break up a stagehand with a Brooklyn wisecrack.”

“In the early 1960’s, when Mr. Szarkowski began his curatorial career, photography was commonly perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world. Perhaps more than anyone, Mr. Szarkowski changed that perception.”

“Not only did America lose one of its most cherished vocal artists and musical personalities, but Sills’ passing pointed up the sobering fact that there is nobody in classical music today remotely capable of duplicating the amazing hold she had on a previous generation of Americans, even those who couldn’t have cared less about opera.”

Prosper Mérimée saved French architecture from 19th Century developers. “This surge of enthusiasm came from several sources. First, a panicky realisation that parts of France were just being demolished, carted away, broken up. The principled (or vindictive) hostility of revolutionaries to the property of aristocracy and church had given way to pragmatic recycling by builders treating ancient monuments as quarries, and antiquarians rounding up loot to sell abroad.”

“A top New York City Ballet dancer was busted with something to put a little extra spring in his jete – a plastic Baggie of cocaine, police said yesterday. And now Nilas Martins is being cut from the rest of the troupe’s summer performances in upstate Saratoga Springs, even though his dad runs the company.”

There are some artists – only a very few – who, with their force of personality and artistry, bring art to a wider audience. Beverly Sills was one such artist, following in a line that included Bernstein, Stokowski, Nureyev, Pavarotti…

“Sills had a beautiful, silvery voice. In her prime, she displayed a wonderfully agile coloratura. But neither quality was one of a kind. There are many gorgeous voices out there today. And many more virtuosic ones. Sills was a good actress. Today in opera there are better, and certainly more daring, ones. Yet no one else sounded like Sills or had her stage presence. She was exactly right for her time, just as, say, the Beatles were for their time.”

Reports that Luciano Pavarotti is near death are premature, says the tenor’s manager. Pavarotti had to suspend performances last year after discovering he had pancreatic cancer. “The twice-married father of four said he is ‘feeling stronger’ as he divides his time between his two homes in Italy. As well as recording he is also teaching students.”