A ceremony in Moscow gave an opportunity to friends, family and admirers of Dmitri Hvorostovsky to say farewell to the greatly admired singer, who died of brain cancer last week. The ceremony was held yesterday, 27 November, in the Pyotr Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. Hvorostovsky’s wife Florence and their two children, together with his parents Aleksandr and Lyudmila,…
Teatro alla Scala has learnt with profound sorrow of the loss, after a long illness, of the baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Born in Krasnoyarsk in 1962, Hvorostovsky was one of the most esteemed voices and one of the most charismatic interpreters of the last decades in a repertoire ranging from Verdi to Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky. At…
Dennis Wayne, known as the ‘Bad Lad of Ballet’, has died of respiratory failure at 72. He made his name as a leading American dancer with the Harkness Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. The ‘Bad Lad of Ballet’ tag arose because of a combination of film star looks and a fiery and rebellious…
Yesterday, Karina Soldatova, the Vaganova Ballet Academy student who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2016, died after a courageous battle against the disease. During the autumn of 2016 she returned to study at the Academy but earlier this year there was a recurrence, which we reported on here, in May of this year. After various appeals to help…
Some of Enzo Dara’s colleagues have written tributes and recollections of the great basso buffo, who died after a long illness on 25 August 2017. Teatro alla Scala left a declaration: Enzo Dara has for decades been the basso buffo par excellence, offering the Rossini revival, as well as the Donizetti operas, performances infused with…
Enzo Dara, who would have been 79 in October, has died in Mantua, his home town. The exemplary Italian basso buffo died at 6pm yesterday afternoon in the town where he was born on 13 October 1938. He was known for his great stage personality, his mastery of comic acting and timing, and extraordinary dexterity in his…
Philip Gossett called himself “a fan, a musician and a scholar,” in that order. The great music scholar, who died yesterday in Chicago at the age of 75, saw himself first and foremost as a fan. It was his love and passion for opera, especially Italian opera of the 19th century, which led him to…
Jeffrey Tate has died of a heart attack while visiting the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, to the east of Milan. He was 74. At 2 o’clock, near the gallery’s cloakroom, he fell ill, but by the time the ambulance arrived there was nothing that could be done. He had been conducting the Haydn Orchestra on…
Dear Yvette, you will always be in my thoughts with immense gratitude for your great artistry that has illuminated the world. Yours, Carla. So writes Carla Fracci after hearing of the death at 99 of her long-standing colleague and friend Yvette Chauviré. She will be in the thoughts of many. Elisabeth Platel told Télérama, She…
The Nobel Prize winning writer, actor, painter, composer and director died this morning in Milan at the age of 90. He was born on 24 March 1926 in San Giano, a small town on Lago Maggiore in Lombardy in the north of Italy. Performing and writing until a few weeks ago, even with a new television programme…
Hello my darling, someone once said that the two of us communicate with our eyes. The eyes are the windows of the soul and our souls have always spoken. I have shared 16 unforgettable years with you, rich with satisfaction and an intense personal life that we have always guarded carefully and privileged above all…
Italian soprano Daniela Dessi has died after a short battle with cancer of the colon. She was just 59. She possessed one of the most beautiful voices on the opera stage today. Recently she was forced to cancel her performances of Medea at the Macerata Festival, and other summer engagements, which she announced to her fans…
An opera house is a small town. It has its mayor, school, shop, laundry, theatre, restaurant, factory. There are people who construct things, clean, teach, cook, entertain, keep fit, buy and sell. Damiano Mastandrea sold tickets for as long as I’ve been attending performances at La Scala; one of the large team that keeps town…
Paolo Poli was, like so many gigantic Italian talents whose fame is based on their way with words, little known outside his own country. He was born in Florence and possessed that typically Tuscan eccentricity which informed both his writing and acting. Poli was a handsome man with an elegant and aristocratic bearing, he possessed a…
Carla Fracci‘s big break came in 1955 when she had to substitute Violette Verdy as Cinderella at La Scala. The 19-year-old Fracci had been asked to cover the role of Cinderella, and was dancing the Spring Fairy in December 1955. When a call came for Verdy to return to Paris for New Year’s Eve, the choreographer,…
“After the Palais Garnier in 1875 and the Opéra Bastille in 1989, the Paris Opera has decided to build its 3e Scène (3rd stage) in the digital world.” That explosive statement comes from a new website, created by the Paris Opera, which will go live on 15 September. But how can a website and your…
Eufemia Brancato died this morning three weeks before her 96th birthday. She was the head of Brancato Costumiers in Milan which she founded in 1961 after five years working at the Piccolo Teatro with Giorgio Strehler. Creating her own company came about after the great Italian designer Luciano Damiani asked her to make all the…
Maya Plisetskaya died of a heart attack today in Munich. She was 89. The director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Vladimir Urin, said, She died of a severe heart attack. The doctors tried everything, but there was nothing they could do. Mikhail Shvydkoi, former Russian Minister of Culture, said, I always thought that Plisetskaya would live forever….
Italian director Luca Ronconi died yesterday evening in the Policlinico in Milan after a short illness. His health had been poor over the last years, he was on dialysis, and was complicated by pneumonia. He was 81. His collaboration with La Scala lasted for over thirty years and today the flag outside the theatre is…
Derek Rencher, one of the longest serving members of The Royal Ballet, has died at 82. Rencher was born in Birmingham on 6 June 1932. He joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1953 and was promoted to soloist in 1957, the year after the company was granted its Royal Charter, becoming The Royal Ballet, and…
Magda Olivero‘s funeral was a life affirming mix of emotions. She was a practising Catholic, and three different priests, who had been close to her for many years, spoke about this very special woman. A Czechoslovakian had known Olivero from the 1960s when he took over the church in Solda. This was where she had…
Theatrical to the last, the great soprano Magda Olivero died on the day of La Scala‘s opening performance after the summer break. Before Maria Agresta‘s recital a beautifully worded tribute to Olivero’s career, voice and life was read out, and then the audience stood for a minute’s silence. It was followed by long applause. Although Olivero…
Carlo Bergonzi (born Polesine Parmense, 13 July 1924 – died Milan, 25 July 2014) Carlo Bergonzi, one of the greatest tenors of the 20th Century, died last night in Milan’s Auxologico Institute, just two weeks after celebrating his 90th birthday on 13 July. Bergonzi was born in Vidalenzo di Polesine Parmense near Parma in 1924 and at…
Ivo Vinco: born Bosco Chiesanuova, Verona, 8 November 1927; died Verona, 8 June 2014 Italian bass Ivo Vinco died yesterday at the age of 86 in Verona, just thirty kilometres from where he was born, Bosco Chiesanuova, and in the city where he studied singing at the Liceo Musicale until transferring to Milan‘s La Scala Academy. His…
Renato Cioni, the great Tuscan tenor, died today in his home town of Portoferraio, on the island of Elba, where he was born almost 85 years ago. His career took off in the mid 1950s when he sang in a television production of Madama Butterfly with Anna Moffo, and Pinkerton was the role with which he made his début…
Ivan Nagy, one of the great names in dance during the twentieth century, died yesterday in Budapest; he was 70-years-old. Nagy was born on 28 April 1943 in Hungary. He trained first with his mother going on to perform with the Budapest State Opera Ballet. Frederic Franklin spotted the young man when Nagy won a…
Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, died this morning at the age of 80. He had been ill for several years, yet continued working until a couple of months ago. He was a greatly loved figure, with a big heart and gentle approach. He often conducted from memory, remarking that the use of a score signified that he hadn’t…
Ballet master David Howard, affectionately known in the media as “Teacher of Stars”, has died at 76. Howard trained at what is now the Arts Educational) School and the Royal Academy of Dance, eventually becoming a soloist with the Royal Ballet, then leaving after seven years to join the National Ballet of Canada. He also…
Regina Resnik, who was born as Resnick (she lost the ‘c’ early on) in the Bronx in 1922, has died in New York after a stroke, at 90. Resnick had a remarkable career change in her thirties went her voice shifted from soprano to mezzo. In an interview with the New York Times in 1967,…
Walter Albisetti, Milan‘s most well-known and respected orthopaedist, has died at 56. He was a specialist in treating dancers and most of the ballet company at La Scala had passed through his consulting room over the last thirty years. He was the medical advisor at La Scala. Albisetti was found dead at his house in Merate,…
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