higashimori
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« Reply #40 on: August 19, 2009, 05:03:44 AM » |
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" German opera singer Behrens dies in Japan, she was 72 ! " http://www.japantoday.com/category/entertainment/view/german-opera-singer-behrens-dies-in-tokyo TOKYO —
German soprano Hildegard Behrens, one of the finest Wagnerian performers of her generation, has died while traveling in Japan. She was 72.
Jonathan Friend, artistic administrator of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said in an email to opera officials that Behrens felt unwell while traveling to a festival near Tokyo. She went to a Tokyo hospital, where she died of an apparent aneurism on Tuesday.
Friend’s email was shared with The Associated Press by Jack Mastroianni, director of IMG Artists.
Her funeral was planned in Vienna.
Organizers for Behrens’ visit in Japan said she was in this country to teach lessons in the hot springs resort town of Kusatsu, north of Tokyo, from Aug 21-29. The lessons were being sponsored by the Kanshinetsu Music Association.
The organizers refused to comment further.
A website for the Kusatsu Summer Music Festival said Behrens’ performances had been canceled, but gave no further details. It said she was to perform on Aug 20.
Behrens was among the finest actors on the opera stage during a professional career that spanned more than three decades. She made her professional stage debut in Freiburg as the Countess in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” in 1971 and made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Giorgetta in Puccini’s “Il Tabarro” in 1976.
One of her breakthrough roles came the following year, when she sang the title role in Strauss’ “Salome” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria.
She sang 171 performances at the Met, where she appeared until 1999. Her breakthrough there was as Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” under conductor Karl Boehm in 1980, and she was most acclaimed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for her portrayal of Bruennhilde in the Otto Schenk production of the Ring Cycle, the Met’s first televised staging of Wagner’s tetralogy.
“She is the finest Bruennhilde of the post-Birgit Nilsson era,” Associated Press critic Mike Silverman wrote in 1989. “Though she lacks the overpowering vocal resources of a great Wagnerian soprano, she makes up for that with dramatic intensity as she changes before our eyes from a frisky young Valkyrie to a passionate and then betrayed lover, and finally to a compassionate woman whose sacrifice returns the ring to its rightful owners, the Rhinemaidens.”
A dramatic soprano, her Met career include Elettra in Mozart’s “Idomeneo,” Isolde in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” Senta in “Die Fliegende Hollander,” Donna Anna in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Santuzza in Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” the title roles in Strauss’ “Elektra” and `Salome,” and Puccini’s “Tosca,” and Marie in Berg’s “Wozzeck.”
She recorded Isolde in Munich in 1981 with conductor Leonard Bernstein and received praise for her Bruennhilde with conductor Georg Solti at the Bayreuth Festival in 1983. Her “Tosca” at the Met, opposite Placido Domingo’s Cavaradossi, is preserved on video along with her Met Ring Cycle.
She was injured during the final scene of Wagner’s “Goetterdaemmerung” at the Met on April 28, 1990, when Valhalla collapsed prematurely and an overhead of foam rubber landed on her. Behrens walked off the stage under her own power and was taken to Roosevelt Hospital.
She missed subsequent performances because of the injury, and later sued the Met, according to a 1995 article in The New York Law Journal.
According to Behren’s official website, she was born in the north German town of Varel-Oldenburg. Her parents were both doctors and she and her five siblings studied piano and violin as children. It said she earned a law degree from the University of Freiburg, where she was also a member of the student choir.
She received Germany’s Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of the Merit Cross), Bavaria’s Bayerischer Verdienstorden and was honored by both the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Vienna State Opera.
 That's big lost , I am so sorry ! R.I.P |
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" They just don't make then like this anymore ." " I just don't meet then like him anymore !! "
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KC
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« Reply #43 on: September 14, 2009, 04:30:49 PM » |
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Lin Sunderland
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« Reply #49 on: September 15, 2009, 12:30:50 AM » |
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Aline
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« Reply #50 on: September 15, 2009, 05:08:56 AM » |
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KC
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« Reply #52 on: September 15, 2009, 05:19:19 PM » |
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Brendan
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« Reply #54 on: September 16, 2009, 06:28:00 PM » |
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/16/obit.henry.gibson/index.htmlActor Henry Gibson dead at 73, spokesman says
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Actor Henry Gibson, who played roles ranging from loopy poets to vengeful Illinois Nazis and cranky judges during a 40-year film and television career, has died at age 73, his representatives said Wednesday.
Gibson was a regular on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," where he was known for popping up to read short, humorous poems during the show's 1968-71 run.
He was a frequent guest star on television shows from the 1970s through the mid-2000s, with a recurring role as a judge on ABC's "Boston Legal" as late as 2008.
His movie roles included turns in two of director Robert Altman's 1970s films, "Nashville" and "The Long Goodbye," and as the neo-Nazi leader pursuing John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in "The Blues Brothers."
No details of his death were immediately available, said Peter Gross, a spokesman Talentworks LA, which represented Gibson.
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