Covid claims international opera conductor, 78

The Croatian conductor Baldo Podic, resident at Basle City Theatre from 1983 to his retirement in 2007, has died of the effects of Covid-19 on an illness for which he was already being treated.

Unflashy and accomplished, he was one of those conductors whom singers trusted most with the audience barely aware of his influence.

Born in Dubrovnik in 1942, he conducted extensively in Austria and Germany before winning a post as music director of the Opera Studio of the Opéra de Paris, while also organising festivals in his own country until the Swiss came along, offering lifelong security.

He guest-conducted The Merry Widow in 1986 at the Lyric Opera in Chicago.

UPDATE: His wife Dawn Symes-Podic posted: Last night my husband died. He had multiple underlying health conditions, but COVID-19 got him in the end. I could not see him or comfort him. Wearing full hazmat they took his body in a sealed coffin during the night. Until a vaccine is found and I emerge from isolation, his ashes will stay with the undertakers.

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