Wendy White is stable in hospital, according to latest reports. She was singing the role of Marthe in Gounod’s Faust when her platform collapsed.
(Wendy is bottom right)
(René Pape (left) as Méphistophélès duets with mezzo Wendy White.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.)
UPDATE: more details here.
Earlier this year, Deborah Voigt and Eve Gigliotti narrowly avoided serious accident in Die Walküre. On another occasion, Robert Lepage’s set jammed in mid-turn, endangering Ms Voigt.
Time for Mayor Bloomberg to send in his healthy and safety inspectors? The Met’s becoming quite an insurance risk for singers.
One balmy summer’s evening in 1990, I went for a stroll in Prague and found myself drawn by a surging crowd into Wenceslas Square.
Flags were being held aloft in desultory fashion and people around me were switching between chatting among themselves to listening to the speakers on the dais. They told me, in that shrug-shouldered Czech fashion, that it was the six-month anniversary of the Velvet Revolution and they were getting on with their lives, pretty much as before. There was plenty complain about.
All of a sudden, the attention level changed. A different speaker had taken the microphone and, insteaqd of exhorting the crowd, seemed to be grumbling along with it. Vaclav Havel had a growly voice, colourless and without much by way of emphasis or inflection. He did not orate: he flatlined.
The people around me explained that he was not making a political speech. There were no promises of better times ahead, no gloating at the fall of tyrants. He was just reflecting, in his own roundabout way, on the historic events they had shared and on the difficulties that lay ahead – the likelihood of a split with the Slovaks and an economic recession.
He did not receive the biggest cheer of the evening – that was reserved for Alexander Dubcek, who ruled during the 1968 Prague Spring – but Havel did not seem bothered as he shambled off. He had spoken, done his bit, and was off for a beer. For an intellectual and an artist, he had an unusual grasp of the concerns of the ordinary man and woman in the square.
That’s the image he imprinted on my ear. He was the voice of the Czech people.
He died today, aged 75.
Hear the voice, and the ideas, in an interview here.
Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident who became post-Communist president has died, aged 75. His great achievement was to lead a revolution without bloodshed, usually with a smile.
He was, of course, a playwright of world renown.
He had suffered respiratory problems for many years and died peacefully in his sleep. His wife, Dagmar, and
several nuns were in attendance, his secretary said.
Some stunning results are reported from a voluntary pilot scheme in Melbourne. It would seem that one hour’s instrumental teaching a week has increased literacy rates among disadvantaged kid to 90%, compared to 65% in schools where no arts teaching was provided.
Essential reading for education ministers and policy makers. Good to see the Mayor of London has got the point.
Read on here.
