Luciano Pavarotti will make his first public appearance next week since an operation to remove a pancreatic cancer in July forced him to cancel a tour, but will not sing, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
The 71-year-old opera singer, regarded by many as the greatest tenor of his generation, will pick up an award for services to opera in a theater in Bergamo, northern Italy.
"He will receive the prize and nine of his students will sing some works by (Gaetano) Donizetti. The maestro will be present for the whole evening in the theatre," said theatre spokeswoman Raffaella Valsecchi.
PHOTO: AP
"He will not sing," she added.
Pavarotti cancelled all remaining tour dates for 2006 when he was diagnosed with the cancer, but has since said he hopes to resume performing in 2007.
The event will take place at Bergamo's Donizetti theatre on Wednesday evening. The award is presented every two years to a singer who has promoted the works of the composer Donizetti, a native of the town nestled in the foothills of the Alps.
Since his operatic debut in 1961, Pavarotti has become one of the most recognized classical musicians in the world.
Meanwhile, Seinfeld co-star Michael Richards, who will personally apologize to three black men and a black woman he offended in a torrent of racial slurs unleashed during a recent nightclub performance, his spokesman said on Friday.
"Since this happened, this is what Michael has wanted to do — get in the room and apologize in person to the recipients of his unfortunate remarks," spokesman Chris Giglio said.
An attorney for the four, Gloria Allred, said Richards has agreed to meet her clients along with a retired judge who will serve as a mediator in recommending any further action. The retired judge has not been selected, and Allred said the meeting is likely to take place in January.
Richards, best known for playing the wacky character Kramer for nine years on the NBC smash hit Seinfeld, might be asked to make a cash payment to the four, but that has yet to be determined, Allred said.
"They (her clients) will be telling him (Richards) about the pain they suffered" as a result of the racial epithets, Allred said during a press conference Friday.
Richards, 57, sparked a public outcry for spewing a torrent of racial slurs at hecklers during his stand-up act at the Laugh Factor comedy club in Hollywood on Nov. 17. The incident was captured in digital camera video footage that was widely circulated on the Internet and was broadcast on TV newscasts three days later.
Allred said her clients were among a large mixed-race birthday party of 23 individuals and were the only blacks at the large table of friends.
After exchanges between Richards and audience members sitting at a table on the upper level of the comedy club, Richards launched into a series of racial epithets, and used "the 'N-word'" as many as 10 times, she said.
The following Monday, Richards issued a public apology during an appearance with Jerry Seinfeld on the CBS Late Show with David Letterman, saying he had lost his temper on stage.
Since then, Richards also has appeared on a radio show hosted by civil rights activist Jesse Jackson to make a similar apology.
And a spokeswoman for Eva Longoria said the Desperate Housewives actress is engaged to San Antonio Spurs basketball star Tony Parker.
"Tony flew into Los Angeles last night after his game and surprised Eva at her home as she got off work," Longoria's spokeswoman Liza Anderson said last week.
"The proposal was romantic and perfect. The couple plans to wed in France in the summer of 2007 in what they describe as a big, happy ceremony with lots of family and friends." The 31-year-old Longoria, who plays crafty Gabrielle Solis on ABC's Desperate Housewives, and Parker, a 24-year-old French citizen, met in the Spurs' locker room after a game two years ago.
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
With weighty, anxiety-inducing geopolitical topics dominating the headlines, checking in on the wild and weird state of local politics can take some of the edge off. This November’s elections will determine who will be in charge of fixing potholes in your neighborhood, not the potholes in Taiwan’s complicated geopolitical space. Recently, after an online interview with a Taipei-based journalist, I commented that Taipei journalists never go further than the MRT can take them. He laughed and agreed. Naturally, the Taipei mayoral race is eating up much of the press attention. TAIPEI CITY Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Puma Shen (沈伯洋) has
Audiences in Leicester, Cardiff, London and Sheffield will this month gather to watch a series of black-and-white Taiwanese-language films made more than 70 years ago. On the surface, these screenings commemorate the seventieth anniversary of taiyupian (台語片) — Taiwanese-language cinema. Yet the significance of these events extends far beyond nostalgia or film history. They represent a remarkable chapter in Taiwan’s ongoing effort to recover, preserve and reinterpret a cultural heritage that was once thought to have largely disappeared. The centerpiece of the program is the Ho Chi-ming (何基明) directed Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan (薛平貴與王寶釧), a film produced in 1955 and
In December of 2008 Lee E-tin (李乙廷), a Miaoli county legislative hopeful, was convicted of vote-buying. Rather than buy votes retail, voter by voter, in the usual manner, Lee had done it wholesale, in a commendably efficient manner: he had visited local temples and made donations to gain their support. Because he did not normally make donations to temples, the court ruled he was attempting to improperly influence voter behavior. The case indicates how important temples are in influencing political life. Both judge and politician appeared to see them in the same way. Beijing sees them that way as well. Democratic Progressive
RSS