danajohnhill.org

You must read this.

I had no idea that “Happy Flag Day” appeared in Flickr’s Explore on June 14. Go figure.

This summer is, by and by, shaping up to be an awful one for opera fans like me. First, we lost Beverly Sills, then, shortly after, Régine Crespin. Last Saturday, on my radio show, I wrapped up my tribute to these two ladies with selections from a Met Lucia with Sills, and Crespin’s legendary Decca disc of Les nuits d’été and Shéhérazade.

This evening I learned that American tenor Jerry Hadley is dying in a hospital in New York state following a suicide attempt. Hadley has had an amazingly successful career, and made many highly-regarded, award winning recordings. I have no fewer than nine discs of his in my personal collection, and I have heard many more in the course of my work.

Tomorrow I expect to pay tribute to him, either via his performance as Candide in the operetta by Leonard Bernstein, or with his outstanding Teldec set of Gounod’s Faust, in which he does something unusual and lovely, by singing the high C in “Salut! demeure chaste et pure” sotto voce. It is sad to read of Mr. Hadley’s tragic demise, especially at his own hand.

Update:  Jerry Hadley has died.  May he rest in peace.

On Saturday we spent the evening with Briana, and while we were out we spied this complete rainbow, the first I have seen in at least a decade.

Back at our house we had food and watched The Notorious Bettie Page. All I can say is Gretchen Mol is real purty.

After a tremendous amount of strenuous physical labor, I finally finished spreading out the mulch that is our new driveway. It arrived in a big pile, left by the city for free by request. Over several days I used a rake and a tarp to drag heaps down the yard, and spread it out. It was baking hot inside the pile, and full of dust and spores and who knows what, which made breathing unpleasant. But now it’s our driveway, and it sure beats parking on wet sand.