# Where are they now?



## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

(I looked for a thread like this so as not to start a new one, but could not find one.)

"Where are they now?" seems like a kinder thread title than "Whatever happened to?" I admit to being curious as to where some of my favorites and not-so-favorites from past years (as well as "Hey! It's that guy"s) have wound up. Still singing? Teaching? Have completely left the opera world and are doing something fabulously non-musical?

Felt prompted to start this when I stumbled across this very recent video of Luis Lima doing "Nessun dorma" in his native Buenos Aires just a couple weeks ago. Now 67 (!) - but to me he'll always be a young and perfectly cast Don Carlo and Turiddu.






Have any reports on the doings of notable names of the past?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

All my favorite singers are pushing up the daisies.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> All my favorite singers are pushing up the daisies.


Or retired in my case, but I know the feeling.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> All my favorite singers are pushing up the daisies.


I just thought of one splendid exception: Christa Ludwig, one of the greatest vocal artists of my time, and still very much with us at 87. Sorry to bury you prematurely, Christa.

I looked up Galina Vishnevskaya to see whether she was still living. She died in 2012, but how many of us were aware of it? The passing of great artists should be events of global significance. Of all people, these are the ones who, in the era of recorded music, will continue to enrich our lives after they are gone.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

I remember when Galina Vishnevskaya passed. I listened to one of her recordings of "Songs and Dances of Death" and the _Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk_ in her memory.

And now I'm listening to the former again.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I'd give anything to see Neil Shicoff just one more time.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Inge Borkh seems to be still with us, but the jury appears to be out as to whether she is 98 or 94! The last recording I heard of her was from 2002 when she provided the inter-song narrative to Brahms' song-cycle _der schönen Magelone_ on the Orfeo label.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

I just googled Robert Massard, who I've just been listening to in Sigurd and Andrea Chenier, and- he is apparently still living, and turned 90 last month!










Gilbert Py, the excellent Adoniram in Michel Plasson's 1969 live recording of La Reine de Saba, is now 82. Too bad he doesn't seem to have recorded much- I have Regine Crespin's Carmen with Py as Don José, though I haven't played it yet. (So many Carmens, so little time.) There are some Youtube videos, made very late in his career, of Otello and Samson, which certainly don't show him at his best, but in 1969 at least he had a strong, manly voice, to say nothing of the physique du role:










Roger Soyer is 76! I don't know where he is or what he's doing- enjoying a well earned retirement, no doubt. I love his smooth, stylish singing. One of the last great basses, whose records are always seeking out. If only there had been more!


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> I'd give anything to see Neil Shicoff just one more time.


He's one of my favorite tenors, and I really regret that I'm too young to remember him as he was in the 1970's and 1980's.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Figleaf said:


> I just googled Robert Massard, who I've just been listening to in Sigurd and Andrea Chenier, and- he is apparently still living, and turned 90 last month!


I was just listening to him earlier this week ... he is the Escamillo in the Callas _Carmen_.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Becca said:


> I was just listening to him earlier this week ... he is the Escamillo in the Callas _Carmen_.


Yes, a hugely versatile singer. My favourite of his complete roles is Rigoletto, which has a dramatic power I wouldn't have suspected him of previously. On the Callas Carmen though, I hope it's not inappropriate to say here that I find Massard, though excellent, a little restrained and slightly dry of voice for Escamillo. I wish Jean Borthayre had been cast- he had the vocal glamour and the swagger, but for his Escamillo I will have to be content with highlights.


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## Steatopygous (Jul 5, 2015)

I'm still here. Would you like me to post a recording of me in the shower?


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