July 5, 2007

2007Régine Crespin, French soprano (born 1927)^[†]

Régine Crespin was a French soprano who had a major international career in opera and on the concert stage between 1950 and 1989. She started her career singing roles in the dramatic soprano and spinto soprano repertoire, drawing particular acclaim singing Wagner and Strauss heroines. She went on to sing a wider repertoire that embraced Italian, French, German, and Russian opera from a variety of musical periods. In the early 1970s Crespin began experiencing vocal difficulties for the first time and ultimately began performing roles from the mezzo-soprano repertoire. Throughout her career she was widely admired for the elegance, warmth and subtlety of her singing, especially in the French and German operatic repertories.

2007George Melly, English singer-songwriter and critic (born 1926)^[†]

Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer, and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973, he was a film and television critic for The Observer; he also lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.