Category: people

— dies at age 86. – The Age (Melbourne)

• TRIBUTES: “He was one of the last surviving members of a great generation of UK actors, which included Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Mills.” – BBC

Frank Sinatra never actually performed in a Broadway show, but he starred in a couple of movie versions of Broadway classics. Now plans are underway to erect a statue to Old Blue Eyes in Times Square. – Theatre.com

“She is 54 now, and past her vocal prime. Time has accentuated her tendency to sing sharp, and the sheer brazen splendour of the sound she once produced is irrecoverably tarnished. As if to compensate, she has developed a grand manner on the platform – complete with radiant smiles, gracious waves and a rapt pose suggesting fervent prayer to the Almighty – which forcibly brings to mind the Irish adage of ‘all gong and no dinner’.” – The Telegraph (UK)

After 43 years John Crosby is stepping down from running the Santa Fe Opera. “A first-rate visionary and a second-rate conductor, Crosby has run his festival like a reasonably benign dictator, amassing an extraordinary record of significant premieres to counterbalance the tourist-attraction repertory. He has done much to cultivate domestic exposure to the neglected operas of his favourite composer, Richard Strauss, and has also helped discover several generations of important American singers. Glyndebourne was never like this.” – Financial Times

Tom Freudenheim, a Jewish American and former director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, has decided to stay in Germany after stepping down from his museum post. His views on antisemitism in Germany, the Holocaust Memorial, and differences between the arts in the U.S. and Germany. – Die Welt

Nine years after the real Dr. Seuss died, the good doctor’s work makes a comeback – a new movie, new musical, even a couple of new books. “Altogether, not a bad comeback for a man who worked in a variety of advertising, film and magazine cartooning jobs well into his 50s, when he finally achieved literary stardom with his back-to-back children’s books Cat and Grinch (1957). His middle name was Seuss – or was it Mischief?” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

The opera singers Marijana Mijanovic and Kresimir Spicer are “the couple of the summer,” having thrilled audiences at Aix-en-Provence’s popular summer opera festival. “But it is also because they are a real-life Romeo and Juliet: she is a Serb, he is a Croat, and they live together in Amsterdam. – New York Times

— at age 91 on Monday. Accomplished novelist and revered editor at the “New Yorker” for 40 years, Maxwell honed the prose of some of this century’s finest American writers, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and Harold Brodkey among them. – CNN

• — the new U.S. poet laureate. First published more than 70 years ago, Kunitz, now 95, has won almost every poetry award (including the Nobel in 1959 to the National Book Award in 1995), although he’s only published a handful of books. “I write poems only when I cannot escape them, when it is so urgent I will sacrifice everything else to do it.” A new Kunitz collection is due out next year. – NPR [Real audio file]

A salute to Marcello Mastroianni, on the eve of the UK’s National Film Theatre’s major retrospective of 22 of his movies. “Nowadays, if you want to sum up Italian style, that sinuous Italian charm that is so easy on the ear and eye, then it’s usually Mastroianni who comes to mind.” – The Guardian