Erin Wall, 44, Dies;
Acclaimed Soprano in Mozart and Strauss
Erin Wall, whose silvery yet warm soprano voice infused works by Mozart, Strauss, Britten and Mahler with luminous elegance, died on Oct. 8 at a hospital in Mississauga, Ontario. She was 44.
The cause was metastatic breast cancer, Lyric Opera of Chicago said.
Lyric Opera was an artistic home base for Ms. Wall, who received her professional start as a member of the company’s prestigious young artist program, now known as the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center. Chicago was the site of the dramatic season-opening performance that jolted her nascent career in 2004, when she jumped in with just a few hours’ notice to replace an ill colleague as Donna Anna in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”
John von Rhein of The Chicago Tribune wrote in his review that “in classic showbiz style, she came, she sang and she conquered.” He praised her voice’s “wide compass, gleaming high extension and ability to float a ravishing, seamless line.”
The Raw Roots of
Tom Petty’s ‘Wildflowers,’
Revealed
at Last
One day in 1993, Tom Petty opened his mouth, and a new song came out, fully formed. “I swear to God, it’s an absolute ad-lib from the word ‘go,’” he later told the writer Paul Zollo of the title track from his melancholic and masterful second solo album, “Wildflowers.” “I turned on my tape-recorder deck, picked up my acoustic guitar, took a breath and played that from start to finish.”The extraordinary new collection “Wildflowers & All the Rest” lets listeners experience that mystical, intimate moment: The first home-recorded demo of “Wildflowers” is among the five-disc release’s many spoils. (There are also 14 more home recordings, a live album, a disc of alternate takes and unreleased recordings of the 10 other tracks that would have made the cut had “Wildflowers” become the double album that Petty, who died in 2017, initially intended.)
In a murmured vocal, Petty sounds like a man fumbling for a light switch and never quite finding it, though a quick flash of luminescence brings a lyric that expresses something simple and true: “Far away from your trouble and worry,” he sings in his tender drawl, “You belong somewhere you feel free.”
8 Things to Do
This Weekend
Open House New York Weekend, an annual celebration of the city’s architecture and urban design, was created in response to Sept. 11 and began two years later in 2003. With some questioning whether New York is dead, now is an opportune moment to remind its residents what makes their city so special.
This year’s festival provides more than 150 online and outdoor programs, links to which will be available on Saturday and Sunday at ohny.org, where you can set up a personalized itinerary. From your computer, you can explore places like the Westbeth Home to the Arts and the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge. In the Black Gotham Experience tour, the artist and historian Kamau Ware examines how the African diaspora has influenced the city’s development. The festival also offers podcasts; a handful, from the “Sites and Sounds” series, remember past landmarks such as the Domino Sugar Factory and Ebbets Field.