Thread: Roll of Honour

The bass-baritone Thomas Hammons who sang more than 250 times at the Metropolitan Opera, has died suddenly at 68, leaving a grieving widow and twin daughters.


A first-choice casting for John Adams opera, he created the role of Henry Kissinger in the world premiere of Nixon in China in 1987 at Houston Grand Opera and performed the role in many other houses. He played the terrorist Rambo in Adams’s Death of Klinghoffer at its Brussels world premiere and featured on the Nonesuch recordings of both works.

Elsewhere, he was a chilling Sacristan in Tosca.

At Cincinnati Opera in 2016 he had a heart attack backstage after rehearsal. A stagehand gave him emergency resuscitation and an extra, who happened to be a surgeon, looked after him until an ambulance arrived. He made a good recovery and enjoyed a full career.

The Greek soprano Elsa Kastela, star of the Bonn Opera while the small town was still Germany’s capital, has died at a well-guarded age. Elsa went on to become a sought-after singing teacher in Vienna.
Age unknown.

Arthur Woodley, a fine operatic bass who died today. 21-11-2020

A New Yorker who grew up in the Virgin Isles, he sang in an Italian rock band to get him through his studies in Bologna and made his debut in October 1979 in Mendelssohn’s Elijah at Carnegie Hall.

He sang at the Met and many other US houses, latterly in Porgy and Bess. He appeared in 12 productions at Seattle Opera. His last major appearance was as Rocco in Atlanta’s Fidelio.

The opera singer Hugh Beresford has died in his adopted city at the age of 94.

Beresford won the Richard Tauber Prize as a baritone in 1951 and decided to continue his studies in Austria. He made his debut in Linz in 1953 as Wolfram in Tannhäuser and in 1960 became a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In 1970 he transitioned to become a tenor, singing the role of Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio. That same year, he made his Bayreuth debut as Tannhäuser.

The violin world is mourning the death yesterday of Camilla Wicks, a violin prodigy who made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at just 13 and became Sibelius’s favourite performer of his violin concerto.She recorded the Beethoven concerto with Bruno Walter and the Walton, gloriously, with Yuri Simonov.

She took a break to raise a family in the 1950s and went on to teach at mostly small US colleges, eventually accepting the Isaac Stern Chair at the San Francisco Conservatory, her final position before retirement. Stern called her simply ‘the greatest violinist’.

‘The greatest female violinist?’ he was asked.

The baroque specialist Sophie Boulin died yesterday in Liège, Belgium, after suffering for a year from a brain tumor.

She performed with William Christie, Jean-Claude Magloire, Sigiswald Kuijken, Philippe Herreweghe, Gustav Leonhardt and many more and had a lasting relationship with the German director Herbert Wernicke.

The Corsican tenor Tiberre Raffalli, a hit in esoteric opera in Paris, has died of unknown case.

He made his name in Reynaldo Hahn’s Merchant of Venice and wnet on to record Offenbach with John Eliot Gardiner. He was well liked in the Glyndebourne touring company.

Klaus Ofczarek, who sang 1,018 opera, operetta and musical performances at the Volksoper, died yesterday in Vienna.

He made his debut in 1978 and retired 30 years later.

The busy conductor Kenneth Alwyn died yesterday at 95.

He made numerous recordings for Decca and EMI of mostly popular repertoire and he was much in demand at the BBC.

He was most called on for film music; his recording of Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concert is a classic.
Less well known were his breathrough recordings on CBS of the symphonies of the Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim.

The international opera singer Leonard Andrzej Mróz has died of an undisclosed cause.

A stalwart of Warsaw’s Grand Theatre, he performed all over Europe and at Carnegie Hall.

An Italian tenor with the most evocative name, del Bianco made his New York debut in 1965 in Rossini’s Stabat Mater by Rossini conducted by Thomas Schippers.

He was a notable Otello all over the world and often appeared in Wagnerian roles and in Lieder recitals.

He retired in 1982 and was 88 at his death on December 8, in his native town of Trieste.

The family have announced the death of Fraser Graham, a talented pianist and teacher at Loughborough University and Cheltenham Music College.

No cause is presently known.

He is described as ‘ a wonderful, kind presence’.