Coronavirus rules: A healthy Thomas Hampson is sent home from Israel

Coronavirus rules: A healthy Thomas Hampson is sent home from Israel

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norman lebrecht

March 05, 2020

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has just informed ticket-holders that the US baritone Thomas Hampson has been put on a plane back to Switzerland ‘under guidelines from the Ministry of Health’.

The Schubert songs that he was to have sung tonight have been replaced by Mozart’s Hafner Symphony.


Hampson with IPO principal viola and guest conductor Osmo Vänskä

UPDATE: We’ve had a call from Tom Hampson to say he’s completely well. He just got caught in a new tranche of Coronavirus rules.

Comments

  • THOMAS HAMPSON says:

    THANK YOU NORMAN for the new title. Thank you all for responding with such concerns for my health as well.
    I ASSURE YOU I AM VERY HEALTHY AND WORKING ACCORDING TO MY PUBLISHED SCHEDULE.

  • THOMAS HAMPSON says:

    BTW the other person in the photo
    is the conductor and now friend,
    Osmo Vänskä

  • sam says:

    Not really news, it all depends on Mr. Hampson’s (or any other passenger’s) itinerary (personal and professional) in the last 14 days prior to landing in Israel.

    Again, any one could be asymptomatic and in fact feeling quite well and still carry the virus; travel and contact history is more dispositive than a temperature reading on a thermometer.

    Likewise, one could be very ill from the normal seasonal flu and not have the coronavirus.

    Normal world-wide procedures, really.

    Israel might have slightly more constraining requirements that unless you have permanent residence in Israel where you can self-quarantine for 14 days, you have to go back.

  • drummerman says:

    Very glad to know that Mr. Hampson is very healthy but if he is healthy then why did he have to leave Israel? I’m a bit confused.

    • Gustavo says:

      Rather, why is Osmo still there?

    • david hilton says:

      This is because Israel, like most countries, does not have admission rules that distinguish between people who are healthy and those who are not. The rules distinguish between persons who have visited particular countries and regions, and those who have not.

  • Gustavo says:

    to go off in a Haffner

  • Scott says:

    Happy to hear that all is well Tom Hampson!

  • Edgar Self says:

    Thomas Hampson hasn’t sung Hafnir or Fafnirb, ut he has sung Siegmund and recorded it, very well too in part thanks to excellent German ition

    I last saw him as a noble and moving Amfortas in a concert “Parsifal” Act iii with Rene Pape’s unforgettable Guernemanz and Burkhardt Fritz’s unmemorable Parsifal. .

  • Ma BASTA!! says:

    Thomas Hampson is still singing?

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