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tonybob
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« on: 21:16:17, 18-07-2007 » |
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click here.how horrible - he had a sweet voice.
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sososo s & i.
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #1 on: 22:58:13, 18-07-2007 » |
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I knew he had apparently attempted suicide, but I've only just found out he's died. A tragic story indeed.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #2 on: 23:10:38, 18-07-2007 » |
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I'm somewhat horrified that he lived for two days after turning off the life support systems. I had thought that death would come very quickly if all vital support had been removed.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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George Garnett
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« Reply #3 on: 23:17:13, 18-07-2007 » |
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A terrible end for a man whose talent had given so much pleasure to others. Desperately sad.
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #4 on: 23:24:31, 18-07-2007 » |
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I'm somewhat horrified that he lived for two days after turning off the life support systems. I had thought that death would come very quickly if all vital support had been removed.
Not something I have in-depth experience of thankfully, but I am told that life can be quite persistent even though artificial life-support systems have been disconnected from a patient. I have heard of at least one instance where nursing staff were advised not to moisten the patient's lips because they might try, unconsciously, to suck water from a moist cloth. |
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« Last Edit: 23:29:08, 18-07-2007 by Kittybriton »
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #5 on: 23:27:29, 18-07-2007 » |
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I'm somewhat horrified that he lived for two days after turning off the life support systems. I had thought that death would come very quickly if all vital support had been removed.
Not something I have in-depth experience of thankfully, but I am told that life can be quite persistent even though artificial life-support systems have been disconnected from a patient. I have heard of at least one instance where nursing staff were advised not to moisten the patient's lips because they may try, unconsciously, to suck water from a moist cloth. How unconsciously? How can anyone possibly gauge such a thing? The thought of someone dying of thirst or in pain and unable to communicate this to anyone is absolutely terrifying. I would definitely err on the cautious and give fluids and painkillers....just in case. So much of this is guesswork I fear. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Kittybriton
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« Reply #6 on: 23:40:51, 18-07-2007 » |
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All of which has led me to the conclusion that medicine is as much an art as a science, even with all our technological advances. The ethical questions that doctors have to face every day would reduce me to a guilt-ridden jelly very quickly.
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #7 on: 23:41:55, 18-07-2007 » |
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I remember him best as Gaylord Ravenal in the excellent recording of Showboat, made about 20 years ago. He was an opera singer who genuinely could do that sort of thing.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #8 on: 23:50:07, 18-07-2007 » |
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All of which has led me to the conclusion that medicine is as much an art as a science, even with all our technological advances. The ethical questions that doctors have to face every day would reduce me to a guilt-ridden jelly very quickly.
Agreed Kitty. Me too. I remember with great sadness some years ago there was a much-publicised case of a severely brain-damaged young man having fluids and sustenance stopped thus "allowing him to die". The family campaigned for this. It took him 17 days to die as I recall. Whilst his quality of life when artificially aided was obviously not as one would wish, I go cold when I think of what he might have suffered, that would have been impossible to clinically gauge. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #9 on: 00:34:02, 19-07-2007 » |
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It comes as a stark reminder too of how fickle success can be: just how quickly someone can fall from the top of the tree, and what desperate problems they may be landed with. That anyone could feel they had anything to gain by quitting this maddening, gladdening, kaleidoscope of mysteries we call life disturbs me deeply. I'd like to think that I have a fair-sized back-up team to turn to before having to contemplate such an end.
One can only hope that at least his rest may be peaceful.
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #10 on: 00:49:21, 19-07-2007 » |
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Having mentioned Showboat earlier, one of the songs he sings - the one that begins "A man who ventures with chance..." - keeps going round my head. For those who don't know it, his character (who is a gambling man) says that whatever life throws his way - good or bad, win or lose - he'll take it with equanimity.
I know that's only a show and I have no wish to trivialize a tragic outcome, but the human mind is unfathomable. Some people cope with unbelievable adversity only to be unhinged by what seems less important. I'm not saying that that applies in this case at all, but I think we can never be sure how we will react to future events.
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #11 on: 19:02:53, 23-07-2007 » |
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Very sad indeed. I also have him on disc in The Rakes Progress as Tom.
I had Showboat on cassette and have never got round to replacing it with CD. The heroine, as I remember, was Frederica von Stade. Whatever happened to her?
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #12 on: 20:34:01, 04-08-2007 » |
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The Opera scene seems to me sometimes to be music as commodity (as per other thread) par excellence, in that singers operate with a fragile instrument under high octane technical pressure plus that of celebrity which is part-celebrity culture, part art-house plate-spinning social graces. They could easily I guess feel used up by these combined pressures atop the musico-dramatic-technical ones. In these days of arbitary or meteoric celebrity, isnt it time for education in general to prepare people for the merciless spotlight and ensuring their longevity under/despite it?
...not least arts education.
In a slightly different genre, I'm reminded of Fran Landesman/ Simon Wallace's song
'A Suicide in Schenectady'-writen for Suzanna McCorkle about one of the latters' friends...whom McCorkle sadly followed. Not long ago I was asked take part in a musidcal project about someone who chose to take their own life, and in the case of some large personalities facing a narrowing and narrow-minded world I have come ot see the nobility in it, at least in their case.
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #13 on: 20:58:14, 04-08-2007 » |
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They could easily I guess feel used up by these combined pressures atop the musico-dramatic-technical ones Indeed so. Someone I know was told by a well-known opera-house that his contract was being severed "because he was 40". No matter that this singer (who was greatly admired as being a very intelligent guy, who could sing nearly anything) had all the main roles of his voice-type ahead of him... some hatchet-man of Martin Smith's was sent to axe him nonetheless. It's almost axiomatic of show-business that "the work" doesn't always end-up in the hands of the most able - very often other factors come into play when things are cast. Sometimes these are relevant (ability to sing/learn in xxx language, look credible in the role, learn it in time, etc), but more often less noble criteria come into (cannot be cast because ex-lover of conductor; wants more money than we consider fair; wants an unreasonable large number of rehearsals; wants an unreasonable small number of rehearsals; insists on the reinsertion of some forgotten aria jettisoned by the composer himself after the 1836 premiere; has a vicious and nasty agent who will make trouble throughout the show; insists that his current mistress is cast opposite him; has a reputation for being truculent, destructive, or divisive in rehearsals etc). In fact it's almost impossible to know who one COULD cast sometimes  But for others left on the sidelines.. or worst of all, those who are suddenly dropped like a hot brick and no-one will tell them why... it can be a wretched and appalling prospect. Every Carmen dreads the day she comes into the theatre to find she's slated to sing Mercedes next season. |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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