Brian Dickie

Off topic again

I cannot overlook the death of John Szarkowski - a great mid westerner and the most important figure in spreading understanding of photography, and elevating the medium to its present status on a level with painting and sculpture as a means of powerful expression. There is an excellent obituary of him in the NYT this morning which explains all.  And it includes this portrait of him by Richard Avedon which I have "borrowed" for today. I hope that neither fine gentlemen would mind.

Not a good week

We lost another celebrated soprano today.  Regine Crespin, a truly great singer who is French - really not many of those.  There are no obituaries yet, but there will be a flood of tributes in the coming days.  She was Glyndebourne's first Marschallin in 1959 - my encounters with her were much later, most recently (and thats not so recent) when she was one of three great ladies who presided over our song masterclasses in Baden-Baden in 1998.  (The others were Elisabeth Soderstrom and Gundula Janowitz).  She was both tough and inspirational, peerless in both departments!

NYT obituary is now published

Bubbles

The opera world mourns Beverly Sills who died yesterday.   She was  a unique personality and a singer and  stage artist of remarkable  skill and charisma who, I always thought, had the misfortune to be an exact contemporary of Joan Sutherland, without whom there would have been no dispute - she would have been the supreme bel canto singer of the century.  Listening to her recordings now it is rather astonishing that this remarkable singing did not propel her to the highest levels worldwide though her appearances at the Scala, Covent Garden etc though infrequent were certainly highlights for Milan and London.  But she was a woman of the broadest interests with a full family life, as well as this dedication to our world of opera that eventually took her to the pinnacles of the arts management world where she excelled no less than she had on the stage.

I knew her scarcely at all - I first met her in the Abbey Road Studios around 1970 when she was recording Traviata conducted by my old friend Aldo Ceccato.  But she was later a regular visitor to Glyndebourne and we did business together when we did a deal for the the Frank Corsaro/Maurice Sendak Ravel Double Bill which we had done at Glyndebourne in 1987 to go to the City Opera of which she was by then General Manager.  One could not ask for a more delightful colleague.

Those interested in fine singing should get her three opera album - Donizetti's Three Queens - obtainable from Amazon by using the link on the left.