Category: people

Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez says being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer last year was an impetus to get him to write his memoirs. “More than a year ago I was put under treatment for three months for lymphoma, and today I am surprised at the enormous stroke of luck this stumbling block has been in my life.” – Dallas Morning News

The winner of this year’s Governor General’s Award for Fiction apparently wrote of his elaborate plans to slaughter professors at McGill University over a dispute about his thesis. He evidently went so far as to drive to Detroit to purchase weapons for the job. University officials are investigating. – National Post (Canada)

When National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” went on air 25 years ago in Philadelphia, it was a modest effort. “Now ‘Fresh Air’ has a larger staff, has contributing critics and commentators, and goes out to 330 NPR stations with 2.9 million listeners in the United States, Europe and Japan.” – Orange County Register (AP)

Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras get together for a rare conference call joint interview. But can anyone get a word in edgewise? – Chicago Tribune

Werner Klemperer, actor, and son of famed conductor Otto Klemperer has died. “Mr. Klemperer performed in many opera productions and, in the last two decades, served as narrator with virtually every symphony orchestra in the United States.” – New York Times

• “For decades, guides have directed countless tourists to a red-roofed, beamed cottage near Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon to pay homage at the place where his mother, Mary Arden, was thought to have been born in the early 16th century. Now it has emerged from new research that she was not born there at all, but in a house some 30 yards down the road in the same village.” – New York Times

Margot Fonteyn’s personal effects, costumes and clothes are to be auctioned off next week, but her friends and the dance community are protesting. – Sydney Morning Herald

• Maria Callas fans spent $1.25 million buying the late singer’s personal things at auction this week. “A Pyrex measuring cup sold for $938, while a French museum paid about $5,000 for a sea-green Christian Dior girdle. The girdle was among numerous intimate objects and underclothes sold by two private collectors.” – Chicago Sun-Times (AP)

Conductor Lorin Maazel is 70 and still looking for new challenges. “Not every musician has loved his tough style, but Maazel’s impact on the musical world through weighty interpretations of the classics has been undeniable.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Maria Callas’s personal things are being auctioned off. “Among the 415 lots are a pair of seamless, black stockings, a pale pink satin slip, a purple and black silk corset, and the much-photographed white mink stole that Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis gave her before he abandoned her for Jacqueline Kennedy.” – CNN