Category: people

“I felt something in the water and lifted it up. Then there was a handle and I went to tell my dad that it looked like a sword,” Saga told the broadcaster Sveriges Television. – BBC

From the mid-1970s through the ’90s, she had a career at most of the world’s top opera houses, but in 1991 she began the job for which she’ll be remembered: teaching singing at the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan. Among her students, there and in her private studio, were Deborah Voigt, Sondra Radvanovsky, Nadine Sierra, Kate Lindsey, and Danielle de Niese. – The New York Times

According to the Versailles prosecutor’s office, the man arrived by taxi to the castle grounds around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday evening. Police were alerted soon after to the threat by the taxi driver, who described the man as “carrying a sheet and taking himself for a king.”  – ARTnews

“He became one of the go-to designers of the second half of the last century, especially in matters of typography. His hand was behind more than 600 typefaces, several of which bear his name.” – The New York Times

At the helm of the UK publishing house Jonathan Cape, “he discovered or helped advance the careers of such acclaimed authors as [Kurt] Vonnegut, [Gabriel] García Márquez, John Fowles, Thomas Pynchon, Ian McEwan, Edna O’Brien, Clive James, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie and Bruce Chatwin.” In fact, 15 of his authors (so far) have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. – The Washington Post

Kluger’s Still Alive redefined the genre. Her work “spared no one with its blunt and haunting narrative — not her cultured neighbors who stopped suppressing their latent anti-Semitism when Germany annexed Austria; not her adult relatives who she believed should have foreseen the ‘final solution’ for European Jews and fled the continent with their families; not her liberators who swiftly wearied of hearing about the Holocaust; not even her tormented self.” – The New York Times

Fleming, like Maureen O’Hara, “was sometimes referred to as the Queen of Technicolor; both actresses had glamorous red hair, green eyes and fair skin. But in later years, she looked back on that as a drawback.” She worked in film, on Broadway, and on TV until, as she said, she just decided to work less. – The New York Times

Montalvo, whom Lin-Manuel Miranda spoke about at length in a Twitter thread on Sunday morning, also performed in the forthcoming movies of In the Heights and West Side Story. – Variety

“[He] had over 150 films to his name, with diverse roles ranging from romantic to serious, and from emotionally disturbed to upbeat and patriotic. His films included several based on stories by renowned Egyptian novelists, such as Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz and Ihsan Abdel Quddous.” – AP

Argentina’s most famous First Lady died of cervical cancer in July 1952, slightly less than a year after she was diagnosed. A researcher has found that, several weeks before her death, she was given a lobotomy, almost certainly without her consent. The ostensible reason was to alleviate her severe pain; just as likely, it was to stop the increasingly dangerous political activity she conducted from her sickbed. – Mental Floss