Obituaries.(Obituary)

WILLIAM WARFIELD, West Helena, AR, January 22, 1920--Chicago, IL, August 25, 2002

The bass-baritone was best known for his performances of Gershwin's Porgy, which he sang in several New York revivals, on an extensive U.S. State Department tour of Europe in 1952, and on a much-loved 1963 album of excerpts from the opera with Leontyne Price (his wife from 1952 to 1972). His earliest professional engagements included a stint in the national tour of the 1946 Broadway hit Call Me Mister, but it was as a recitalist that Warfield first made his reputation. His lavishly praised 1950 debut at Manhattan's Town Hall led to his engagement by MGM for the role of Joe in the 1951 film of Show Boat, thus establishing the song "Ol' Man River" as a Warfield specialty for the rest of his career. He maintained an active concert schedule for more than forty seasons, with six U.S. State Department recital tours to his credit--more than any other American solo artist. Television credits for Warfield included "De Lawd" in a 1957 Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures. He was appointed Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1975 and joined the faculty of Northwestern University in 1994. Beginning in 1989, Warfield toured with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, narrating concert presentations of Porgy and Bess, Show Boat and Harlem Rhapsody. He died of complications from injuries suffered in a fall in July.

ANTON GUADAGNO, Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, April 18, 1923--Vienna, August 16, 2002

Artistic director and principal conductor of Palm Beach Opera since 1984, and a resident conductor at the Vienna State Opera, Guadagno died of a heart attack the day after leading a performance of Verdi's Otello in St. Margarethen, Austria. Guadagno made his U.S. debut in 1952, conducting ...