Sad

Robert Goulet, 1933-2007

The Broadway baritone, star of Camelot, died yesterday at the age of 73. Goulet won a Tony Award for for the 1968 Kander and Ebb musical The Happy Time, and most recently appeared on Broadway as Georges in the 2004 revival of La Cage aux Folles. An obituary and appreciation of the performer can be…

I mulini di Signa li lascio al cara … Nicoletta Mantovani!

How sad that Luciano Pavarotti‘s final role should be Buoso Donati!

Luciano Pavarotti 1935 – 2007

Tribute to Pavarotti at Unnatural Acts of Opera

NYT reports on Hadley

Story now on the Times website reports that last night Jerry Hadley shot himself in the head; the case is being investigated as an attempted suicide. According to a spokesperson for the State Police, Hadley is not expected to survive.

This is very bad news indeed

AP reports that Beverly Sills is “gravely ill with cancer.” Sills has always been very hands-on with her PR, so if she’s allowing this story to get out, I’m afraid she’s basically announcing that the end is very near. (If she’s not in control of the story, that’s not good news either: she’d have to…

Ruth’s no stranger to friction

DRAMA on the front page of today’s NYT Arts section! Ruth Ann Swenson comes out swinging at the Met for “snubbing” her in favor of younger and less zaftig artists. Her current run of Cleopatras in Giulio Cesare is her final contact with the Met*, apparently the end to a 20-season career there spanning over…

You are dead, you know

In yet another dazzling example of counter-intuitive programming, the New York City Opera has decided to exhume their quarter-century old ticky-tacky Hal Prince staging of that overexposed snoozefest Candide to replace their scuttled new production of Ragtime. (Gee, how long is it since we last heard Candide here in New York? It must be twenty…

New York has neon, Berlin has bars…

Sad, sad, sad. When you do a Google News search for “paris and opera,” this is what you get.