Margaret Mikulska wrote:

>>Not a long time ago - a couple of seasons - at the Met, a singer in
>>Janacek's The Makropoulos case had a fatal heart attack while singing
>>something about life being short ...

And Jan McDaniel added:

>After this tenor's death and subsequent fall stopped that performance, I
>heard that Jessye Norman (for whom the production had been mounted) was
>reticent to perform the work, feeling that the production might be cursed.
>She did, however, eventually return to the show.  And it was in December
>of 1995, during a series of horrible blizzards, when all this took place.

I was listening to this performance on the radio; of course we were not
aware of the accident as it happened.  But during the first intermission I
listened to the Opera Quiz, and it quickly became apparent that something
was wrong:  the quiz went on and on, with the panel getting more and more
exhausted and the quizmaster desperately asking question after question.
Finally, after about 35-40 minutes we were told there had been an accident;
no details were given and the opera continued, as I recall.

Julia Werthimer <[log in to unmask]>
California, USA