Category: people

Naguib Mahfouz, 91, the first writer in Arabic to win the Nobel prize for literature, is in intensive care in a Cairo hospital. “We took him to hospital with a heavy flu which made his breathing difficult and he was admitted as an emergency to the resuscitation unit. His memory has been a little disturbed by the fever, [but] thank God, he is doing better.”

When last we heard from Ben Heppner, he was walking offstage in the middle of a program complaining of vocal problems. Now he’s back, singing a program in Boston. Richard Dyer reports: “The Canadian tenor has emerged from 18 difficult months of vocal problems and cancellations. He has taken charge of his life; he must have dropped 50 pounds since the last time we saw him, and he looks terrific. And it is a relief and a joy to report that the mighty voice is back in full flood. This listener heard only one insecurely supported tone in the program, and it was quiet and in the middle register.”

Edith Love, credited with stabilizing the Dallas Theatre Center’s finances as the theatre’s managing director, has resigned. “Before the Theater Center hired Ms. Love, it faced a $1.75 million deficit. By the 1999-2000 season, the company was in the black. Though the recent economic slump has caused a drop in donations and cancellation of some productions, the Theater Center’s finances have remained stable as the annual budget has grown, from $3.9 million in 1996 to $5.5 million this year.”

“EMI considers itself the protector of Maria Callas’ official recorded heritage. Yet, in November, the company added four complete opera recordings and five recital discs to its Callas Collection, all pirated or quasi-legal releases from smaller labels. Why has EMI put out recordings that, not so long ago, it was trying to suppress? To remain the major player in the Callas market as recordings from the 1950s enter the public domain in Europe, where copyright protection for sound recordings lasts only 50 years. EMI has, in effect, legitimised these recordings, securing the tapes from a furtive independent label that had held them…”

It has been a year since Canadian tenor Ben Heppner shocked a Toronto audience by cracking several notes and then calling a halt to his recital mid-aria. Heppner, long considered the most talented operatic tenor in a generation, has spent the last 12 months struggling to find out what it was that caused his voice to suddenly abandon him. He’s cagey about specifics, but the answer appears to have been found in the side effects from a medication he was taking. He is scheduled to return to New York’s Metropolitan Opera next month.

Samuel Sachs II has announced he’s stepping down as director of the Frick Museum after six years there. “A quirky institution known for its stuffy, family-run board, it now attracts nearly 350,000 visitors a year, up 20 percent a year since Mr. Sachs became director. When he arrived, after having run the financially ailing Detroit Institute of Arts for 12 years, Mr. Sachs said his mission was more one of “fine turning” than of making major changes.”

The celebrated playwright Jean Kerr has died of complications from pneumonia at her home in New York state. Kerr, who is best known for penning the collection Please Don’t Eat The Daisies, which was later made into a film, also had multiple successes on Broadway, and was admired for her willingness to poke fun at the show business industry. Kerr was 80.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 84, has been in a Moscow hospital since the end of December. He is said to have “spent the past few days there and was ‘already feeling better’. Conflicting reports from Russian news agencies had suggested the writer was suffering from – variously – a stroke, hypertension or angina.”

Gilbert Kaplan has netted a number of firsts in his conducting career. “As well as being the first amateur to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic, Kaplan is also the conductor with the smallest repertoire in history.’ Mahler 2nd. “Now 61, he made his conducting debut at the age of 40 with Mahler Two” and he’s conducted it 100 times. Now “he is in Vienna for four days to make a recording of the work for Deutsche Grammophon with the orchestra that Mahler himself conducted.”

What did art filmmaker Ingmar Bergman do in the 1950s when he was short of cash? He made soap commercials. “He had eight children to feed, a long-running strike had paralysed the Swedish film industry, and theatres were closed for the summer. He needed to work. It was inevitable that film historians would track down the missing films…”