Category: people

Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was a complicated artist, writes Tim Page. “Within the past two years, the music world has lost Renata Tebaldi, Victoria de los Angeles, Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo, all sopranos who blazed brightly in the 1950s and 1960s on early LP and stereo recordings; now, with Schwarzkopf’s death, an era seems well and truly at an end.”

“Dame Elisabeth was one of the most admired singers of the 20th Century, equally famous for her operatic performances and her concert appearances. Her specialties included the works of Mozart, Schubert and Hugo Wolf, and she was particularly associated with the role of Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier.”

“The controversial French writer Jean Baudrillard, notorious for his essay ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’ and his trenchant views on the symbolism of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, will make a public appearance in London in the autumn for the first time in six years.”

“In her lifetime she was widely — if by no means universally — regarded as one of the greatest sopranos of her generation. Yet even at the height of Schwarzkopf’s career, there were plenty of critical naysayers who found her singing fussy and mannered to the point of archness, and since her retirement in 1975, it’s my impression that their point of view, which I share, has come to prevail.”

Artist, filmmaker, hotel decorator? Julian Schnabel has just designed the interior of Ian Schrager’s Gramercy Park Hotel. “Ever the rebel, Mr. Schnabel rejects the obvious term for someone who does what he has just done at the Gramercy Park Hotel. ‘I’m not a designer, but I’ve always built things,’ he said. ‘Basically I’m a painter, and this is something that really isn’t that hard to do.'”

At the age of 30, Kenneth Walton had a boring job as an attorney with a big Sacramento law firm, spending his days staring out of the windows of his 28th-floor office and surfing the internet when he should have been preparing briefs for corporate clients. He had the beginner’s salary, with the promise of riches to come, and a successful lawyer girlfriend with a coveted job in a judge’s chambers.” And then he faked a painting and sold it on eBay…

“Harold Scott, an actor, producer and director and the first black artistic director of a major American regional theater, died at his home in Newark on July 16.” The longtime head of the directing program at Rutgers University and a collaborator with actor Avery Brooks, he led the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park from 1972 to ’74.

Looking back, it’s shocking how long it took for Asians to be accepted in Hollywood as anything other than stereotypes and stock characters. But since 1965, the actor known in L.A. simply as Mako worked tirelessly to showcase Asian actors and build a dynamic Asian theatre tradition. “Though the invention of Asian American theater was a collective act, Mako was its center, its heart, its founding father, the glue that held all else together.” Mako died in mid-July, leaving behind a vast legacy.

Famed jazz pianist Oscar Peterson says that he and his family are being subjected to regular racial taunts and slurs near their home in a Toronto suburb. “Mr. Peterson, who was born in Montreal, has spent more than 50 years as an international jazz star, and has been honoured with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an International Jazz Hall of Fame Award and entry into several halls of fame. In addition to being put on a stamp, Canada made him a companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian achievement. After living here for most of his life, Mr. Peterson said the past month’s experience has left him seriously considering moving to the West Indies.”

“Dika Newlin, a composer and musicologist who was deeply influenced by the avant-garde master Arnold Schoenberg and brought his style into the punk rock era, has died. She was 82… A composer of several operas and chamber works, Newlin began exploring popular music in the mid-1980s. Inspired by her college students, she sang and played keyboards in a band called Apocowlypso. More recently she performed as a flame-haired punk rocker and performance artist, singing works such as ‘Murder Kitty,’ composed solely of meows.”