obituary
Christa Ludwig, 1928-2021: a selective tributeFriday, 07 May 2021
I only saw Christa Ludwig twice live in concert, but those appearances epitomise her incredible dramatic and vocal rage as well as her peerless artistry in everything she did. The first event was Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Charles Spencer... Read more... |
Helen McCrory: 'If there's one interesting thing about acting it's trying to lose your ego'Monday, 19 April 2021
Each generation is given an actress who can do everything – be intimate with the camera but also coat a back wall in honey from 100 paces. There was Judi Dench, and then there was Imelda Staunton, both loved by all. Helen McCrory – who has died... Read more... |
'I loved being a dresser': Sir Ronald Harwood, Oscar-winning writer, dies at 85Wednesday, 09 September 2020
Ronald Harwood, who has died at the age of 85, was best known for his play about tending to the needs of the larger-than-life actor-manager Donald Wolfit. The Dresser, adapted by Harwood, went on to become a great film success starring Tom Courtenay... Read more... |
'She was Paris': RIP Zizi Jeanmaire (1924-2020)Wednesday, 22 July 2020
"You talk like Marlene Dietrich, you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire, your clothes are all made by Balmain, and there’s diamonds and pearls in your hair…" . Peter Sarstedt may have been a one-hit wonder, but his 1969 pop song, "Where do you go to (my... Read more... |
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in RomeTuesday, 07 July 2020
Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill.... Read more... |
Ian Holm, British film's best supporting actorSaturday, 20 June 2020
Ian Holm was once in his local cinema on High Street Kensington, enquiring at the ticket office about concessions for people who appeared in the film they wished to see. The unlucky vendor failed to make the connection between the short customer... Read more... |
Larry Kramer: 'I think anger is a wonderful useful emotion'Thursday, 28 May 2020
Larry Kramer, who has died at the age of 84, was the Solzhenitsyn of AIDS who indomitably reported from the gay gulags of Manhattan’s quarantined wards and revolving-door hospices. “I felt very much like a journalist who realises that he has been... Read more... |
In memoriam Dmitri Smirnov (1948-2020) - a personal tribute by Gerard McBurneyThursday, 07 May 2020
November 1979… and a small group of Soviet composers (dubbed the "Khrennikov Seven") unexpectedly found themselves the targets of a boorish public assault by that once infamous General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, in a speech at the... Read more... |
Remembering John Prine, one of the great American singer-songwritersWednesday, 08 April 2020
John Prine, who has died at the age of 73 from a Covid 19-related illness, was one of the great American folk poets. Having spent his early adulthood pounding the sidewalks as a mailman in Chicago, he never quite shucked that blue-collar aura of the... Read more... |
Remembering Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)Tuesday, 31 March 2020
No composer since Stravinsky has defined his age as comprehensively as Krzysztof Penderecki, who died on Sunday aged 86. Initially an uncompromising modernist, Penderecki was one of the composers who put Poland at the forefront of the musical avant-... Read more... |
Roy Hudd: 'I was just trying to make 'em laugh'Monday, 16 March 2020
Roy Hudd, who has died at the age of 83, was the last link to the age of entertainment before television. Born in 1936, he entered the business just as music hall and variety were dying out. But he knew the luminaries of that era: Gracie Fields, Max... Read more... |
Jessye Norman, 1945-2019Tuesday, 01 October 2019
She was recording Carmen in Paris, and the Radio France auditorium was packed with the press, asking such dazzling questions as "have you been up the Eiffel Tower yet?" and "what do you think of the French men?". I thought, given the statuesque... Read more... |
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