Laura Bretan, 13, sang Nessun Dorma.
Laura is from Bucharest. She was recruited from Romania’s Got Talent.
Keanon Kyles, 27, is a maintenance man at ABC News in Chicago.
Among other things.
This summer he’s landed a role at Scottish Opera.
Report below.
Marks & Spencer are to stop playing music in response to protests from older customers.
Read here.
A spokesman from Pipedown said: “Millions of customers will be delighted by this news. So will thousands, probably tens of thousands, of people working in M&S who have had to tolerate non-stop music not of their choice all day for years.”
However John Munroe, a senior external events advisor at the British Retail Consortium, which represents retailers in the UK, said most shops taking the decision to cut music were doing so for “cost purposes” as the cost of providing music is increasing.
He added that older customers with impaired hearing and dementia may prefer shopping in outlets where there is no background music.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung dedicated its letters page this weekend to supporters of Siegfried Mauser, the former rector of the Academy of Music who was found guilty of groping a resisting female colleague. His supporters include such eminent intellectuals as Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Michael Krüger.
Mauser has issued notice of appeal.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has attacked the supporters’ campaign, wondering how these ivory-tower academics could know more about the sexual assaults than 16 witnesses whose testimony the court believed. Doch der ehemalige Rektor der Münchner Musikhochschule hat Berufung eingelegt. Und hat berühmte Unterstützer auf seiner Seite, die es aus irgendeinem Grund besser wissen als 16 Zeugen.
And more here.
Allan Yang, 51, has said he will plead guilty to 16 offences involving indecent assaults on four underage girls between 2006 and 2013.
Yang, a saxophonist, ran the so-called Melbourne Music Academy in Kew from 2014-15.
More here.
The former Bolshoi Theatre soloist Paul Dmitrichenko, who organised an acid attack on artistic director Sergei Filin, walked free today on parole after serving half his sentence.
The motive was believed to be connected to resentment over casting decisions for the dancer’s former girlfriend, the ballerina Angelina Vorontsova.
Naxos are bringing forward the release today of a fourth album of Clementi sonatas played by Susan Alexander-Max, US-born founder of the London chamber ensemble The Music Collection and former professor at the Guildhall School of Music.
Susan died in January of cancer, her death unrecorded in public media.
A sad loss.
The number 27 has acquired an ominous aura after the deaths of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse at that age. Their deaths were believed to be substance-related.
Yesterday, Thomas Fekete, founder and guitarist of surf-rock band Surfer Blood, died at 27 of a rare cancer, bravely borne. A terrible loss.
