Category: people

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il’s official bio is quite the document, laying out the Dear Leader’s supposed accomplishments in the fields of international relations, publishing, and pretty much everything else under the sun. And then there’s this sentence: “It is also said that he wrote six operas, all of which are better then any in the history of music.” Well, of course they are. Regardless of whether he has actually written any operas, Kim has authored a book on opera (along with 1500 others, according to the bio,) which contains such keen artistic insights as “In the first place, an opera singer must sing well.”

One of the opera world’s behind-the-scenes stars is leaving it all behind this summer. Peter Jonas, who has led English National Opera and Munich’s Bavarian State Opera over the course of a 21-year career as a general manager, will retire in September at the comparatively young age of 59. “Intellectual rigour and confrontational energy” are terms often used to describe Jonas’s management style, and it’s no coincidence that his happiest years came with the relatively small and provincial Munich company.

“German conductor Heinrich Hollreiser died on July 24, according to a statement on the Vienna State Opera’s website. He was 93. Hollreiser was principal conductor (first Kapellmeister) of the Vienna State Opera from 1952-1961… He also led operas at Covent Garden, Bayreuth, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the Metropolitan Opera during his career and guest-conducted the Vienna Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra.”

A UK man is suing police for preventing him from going back into his burning house to rescue his art. “Edmund Carlisle, 84, alleges that police falsely imprisoned him as he tried to get back into his 16th century home to rescue heirlooms and treasures he and his wife had collected over a lifetime.”

“Alexandr Zhdanov, a Soviet dissident artist whose life and work were marked by difficulty, defiance, determination and more than a touch of madness, died July 18 of a heart ailment at Howard University Hospital. He was 68. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was part of a group of independent-minded underground artists who challenged the authority of the Soviet Union’s communist officials and sometimes paid a bitter price for rebellion.”

The Motion Picture Association of America has sued thousands of people for piracy. But a 30-year-old software engineer is challenging the suit brought against him. “Though he expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he thinks it’s a small price to pay to challenge the MPAA’s tactics. ‘They’re completely abusing the system. I would spend well into the millions on this’.”

Award-winning blues musician Jessie Mae Hemphill, whose professional career didn’t begin until the 1980s, died Saturday in Memphis.

“Mako, a distinguished stage and screen actor who was widely regarded as having blazed the trail for Asian-Americans in films, on television and in the theater, died on Friday at his home in Somis, Calif. He was 72.”

“He served as principal oboe of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1965 until his reluctant retirement, due to an eye condition, in 2001. During those 36 years, a record in the post, he played under three music directors — George Szell, Lorin Maazel and Christoph von Dohnanyi — and the conductor who would become music director in 2002, Franz Welser-MÖst. Along with his legacy of performances and recordings, Mack taught oboists who hold positions in orchestras throughout the United States and abroad.”

Luciano Pavarotti recently had to stop his farewell tour to have an operation for pancreatic cancer. But he says he’ll return. “I have every intention of returning to singing. I want to finish my tour. I can’t give precise dates because I’ll have to discuss it with the doctors, but I think I’ll start again next year.”