One of Jon Vickers’s greatest roles was in Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saens. So of course his death brought to mind Florence + The Machine’s song Delilah from their excellent new album “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful”:
If that’s not to your taste, here is Vickers again:
The great Canadian tenor Jon Vickers died today. My most memorable evening in the theater was seeing him, Renata Scotto, and Cornell MacNeil at the Met in the Zeffirelli production of Otello. (Seems to me that Otello is that rarest of creatures that is actually better than its Shakespearean source.)
Here is Vickers in the final scene of Verdi’s opera. Art just doesn’t get any better than this.
Richard Bowker 