Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Pierre Audi, Eminent Force in the Performing Arts, Dies at 67

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      After turning a derelict lecture hall into the daring Almeida Theater, he had a long career as a director and impresario in Europe and New York.Pierre Audi, the stage director and impresario whose transformation of a derelict London lecture hall into the cutting-edge Almeida Theater was the opening act in a long career as one of the world’s most eminent performing arts leaders, died on Friday night in Beijing. He was 67.His death, while he was in China for meetings related to future productions, was announced on social media by Rachida Dati, the minister of culture in France, where Mr. Audi had been the director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival since 2018. The announcement did not specify a cause.Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded the Almeida, which opened in 1980 and swiftly became a center of experimental theater and music. He spent 30 years as the leader of the Dutch National Opera, and for part of that time was also in charge of the Holland Festival. For the past decade, he had been the artistic director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York.The Almeida Theater in London. Mr. Audi was in his early 20s when he founded it in 1980, and it soon became a center of experimental theater and music.View PicturesAll along, he continued working as a director at theaters around the world. Last year, when the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels cut ties with Romeo Castellucci halfway through his new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring,” the company turned to Mr. Audi as one of the few artists with the knowledge, experience and cool head to take over such an epic undertaking at short notice.“He profoundly renewed the language of opera,” Ms. Dati wrote in her announcement, “through his rigor, his freedom and his singular vision.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bob Filner, Mayor of San Diego Who Left Amid Scandal, Dies at 82

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      A progressive member of Congress for two decades, he resigned as mayor after 18 women accused him of sexual harassment.Bob Filner, a progressive Democrat who served two decades in Congress and then successfully ran for mayor of San Diego, promising to shake up City Hall — but whose career imploded within months amid a storm of sexual harassment charges — died on April 20. He was 82.His family announced the death. The announcement did not give a cause or say where he died, but The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that he died in an assisted living home in Costa Mesa, Calif.Mr. Filner, who was known for his brash and combative style, resigned as mayor under pressure in August 2013, after 18 women accused him of sexual misconduct in his time as mayor and during his years in Congress.The women included a retired Navy rear admiral, a university dean and Mr. Filner’s former communications director, who said that Mr. Filner had told her he wanted to see her naked and asked her to work without underwear.He left office denying any wrongdoing. But two months later, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of false imprisonment and misdemeanor charges of battery involving two other women. He was sentenced to three months’ home confinement and three years’ probation.“I never intended to be a mayor who went out like this,” he said.Mr. Filner, when he was the mayor of San Diego, at a news conference in July 2013 at which he apologized for his conduct toward women. He would resign the next month.Fred Greaves/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Horowitz, Leftist Turned Trump Defender, Is Dead at 86

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      Once a Marxist, he came to embrace hard-right positions, including the falsehood that Mr. Trump won in 2020, and to mentor Stephen Miller, later the Trump adviser.David Horowitz, a radical leftist of the 1960s who did a political about-face to become an outspoken conservative author and activist, writing that Barack Obama had “betrayed” America, and an ardent cheerleader for Donald J. Trump, died on Tuesday. He was 86.The David Horowitz Freedom Center, a think tank he founded in Southern California, said the cause was cancer. His wife, April Horowitz, said he died at his home in Colorado.Once a self-described Marxist, Mr. Horowitz executed a dizzying transit from the extreme left to the extreme right. He argued that the Black Lives Matter movement had fueled racial hatred; he opposed Palestinian rights; he denounced the news media and universities as tools of the left; and he falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, which Mr. Horowitz called “the greatest political crime” in American history.A prolific author since his early 20s, Mr. Horowitz published several pro-Trump books, including “Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America” (2017) and “The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America” (2021). The enemies he accused of totalitarian impulses were the mainstream Democrats Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, and Kamala Harris, then the vice president.Mr. Horowitz was a mentor to Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, whom he met when Mr. Miller was a California high school student fervidly critical of multiculturalism.At Duke University, Mr. Miller started a chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, a grass-roots advocacy group founded by Mr. Horowitz. Mr. Horowitz asked him to help coordinate an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” on college campuses, according to Jean Guerrero, a biographer of Mr. Miller, writing in Politico in 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Thomas, Leader of the Band Pere Ubu, Dies at 71

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      David Thomas, the singer and songwriter who led Pere Ubu and other bands that stretched the parameters of punk and art-rock, died on Wednesday in Brighton and Hove, England. He was 71.Mr. Thomas had suffered from kidney disease, but the announcement of his death, on Pere Ubu’s Facebook and Instagram sites, did not specify a cause, citing only “a long illness.” He lived in Brighton and Hove, but the announcement did not say if he died at home.Through five decades of recordings and performances, Mr. Thomas maintained an audacious, unpredictable, ornery and ambitious spirit. He perpetually defied and upended structures and expectations, and he reveled in dissonance and unsprung sounds.In the mid-1970s, at the dawn of punk rock, Pere Ubu described itself as “avant-garage.” And as punk developed its own constraints and conventions, Mr. Thomas purposefully warped or ignored them. When late-’70s punk bands sported T-shirts, leather and ripped jeans, he performed in a suit and tie. And while much of his music stayed grounded in rock, he also delved into chamber music, cabaret, electronics and improvisation.Mr. Thomas in performance in 1979. Big-boned and overweight, he wielded his bulk proudly onstage. David Corio/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHis voice was always distinctive: a liquid, androgynous tenor that he pushed to its limits and beyond — crooning, chanting, whooping, muttering, barking, burbling, yelling. His lyrics could be apocalyptic, free-associative, mocking, euphoric, cryptic or startlingly direct. Onstage, gesticulating vehemently, he veered between endearing and irascible.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Virginia Giuffre, Voice in Epstein Sex Trafficking Scandal, Dies at 41

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      She accused Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, of recruiting her to join their sex-trafficking ring and sued Prince Andrew for sexual assault.Virginia Giuffre, a former victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring who said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” as a teenager to rich and powerful predators, including Prince Andrew of Britain, died on Friday at her farm in Western Australia. She was 41.Ms. Giuffre died by suicide, according to a statement from the family. Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) wrote in an Instagram post in March that she was days away from dying of renal failure after being injured in a crash with a school bus that she said was traveling at nearly 70 m.p.h.In 2019, Mr. Epstein was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with sex trafficking and conspiracy, and was accused of soliciting teenage girls to perform massages that became increasingly sexual in nature.Barely a month after he was apprehended, and a day after documents were released from Ms. Giuffre’s successful defamation suit against him, Mr. Epstein was found hanged in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. His death, at 66, was ruled a suicide.In 2009 Ms. Giuffre, identified then only as Jane Doe 102, had sued Mr. Epstein, accusing him and Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator and the daughter of the disgraced British media magnate Robert Maxwell, of recruiting her to join his sex-trafficking ring when she was a minor under the guise of becoming a professional masseuse.Ms. Giuffre in 2023 with a photo of herself as a teenager. She said she was recruited to Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring as a minor and that she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” among his powerful friends.Emily Michot/Miami Herald, via Tribune News Service, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roy Thomas Baker, Who Helped Produce ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ Dies at 78

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      Among the most successful music producers in the 1970s and ’80s, he helped churn out hits for acts like Queen, the Cars, Journey and Foreigner.Roy Thomas Baker, who was among the most successful music producers of the 1970s and 1980s and who helped produce Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the most unconventional pop hits, died at his home in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., on April 12. He was 78.His death was announced by Bob Merlis, a spokesman, who said in a statement that the cause was unclear.Besides Queen, Mr. Baker collaborated with other well-known bands like the Cars, Journey, Mötley Crüe and Foreigner while working as a producer and sound engineer at several recording studios over the course of his career.He is perhaps best known for helping to produce the nearly six-minute-long “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. In an interview with The New York Times in 2005, Mr. Baker said that the song was “ageless” because “it didn’t confine to any given genre of music.”“I thought it was going to be a hit,” said Mr. Baker, who produced the song with Queen. “We didn’t know it was going to be quite that big. I didn’t realize it was still going to be talked about 30 years later.”Roy Thomas Baker was born on Nov. 10, 1946, in Hampstead, England. He began his career at Decca Studios in London in 1963, working as a second engineer to Angus Boyd (Gus) Dudgeon, an English record producer who would later become known for his collaborations with Elton John; and Tony Visconti, an American producer who went on to work with artists like David Bowie and Marc Bolan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Max Romeo, Leading Voice in the Heyday of Roots Reggae, Dies at 80

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      His early hits were filled with sexual innuendo. But he later switched to a soulful political message that resonated in 1970s Jamaica and beyond.Max Romeo, a reggae singer whose earliest hits dripped with sexual innuendo, but who then switched to a soulful, politically engaged message that provided a soundtrack to the class struggles of 1970s Jamaica and made him a mainstay on the international tour circuit, died on April 11 outside Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. He was 80.Errol Michael Henry, a lawyer who represented Mr. Romeo, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was heart complications.Mr. Romeo, whose real surname was Smith, was among the last of a generation of Jamaican musicians who came to prominence in the 1970s, among them Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear. Their sound, known as roots reggae, centered on the lives of ordinary people in Jamaica, blended with a heavy dollop of Black liberation and Rastafarianism.Until then, reggae had been seen, at least beyond Jamaica, as a musical novelty focused on fleeting love and sex. But the 1970s musicians’ political message and laid-back sound, combined with their open marijuana use, gave reggae a new and lasting cultural resonance.Mr. Romeo, a veteran of the reggae tour circuit, performing in Switzerland in 2023. His tour that year took him to 56 cities.Valentin Flauraud/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Romeo’s career tracked that transition. He began as a clean-cut crooner in Jamaica, part of a trio called the Emotions. After setting out on his own, he found success with raunchy songs like “Wet Dream,” a 1968 track so explicit that many radio stations refused to play it. Nevertheless, it spent 25 weeks on the British singles chart, peaking at No. 10.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-Winning Peruvian Novelist, Dies at 89

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      Mr. Vargas Llosa, who ran for Peru’s presidency in 1990 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010, transformed episodes from his personal life into books that reverberated far beyond the borders of his native country.Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist who combined gritty realism with playful erotica and depictions of the struggle for individual liberty in Latin America, while also writing essays that made him one of the most influential political commentators in the Spanish-speaking world, died on Sunday in Lima. He was 89.His death was announced in a social media statement from his children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa.Mr. Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010, gained renown as a young writer with slangy, blistering visions of the corruption, moral compromises and cruelty festering in Peru. He joined a cohort of writers like Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia and Julio Cortázar of Argentina, who became famous in the 1960s as members of Latin America’s literary “boom generation.”His distaste for the norms of polite society in Peru gave him abundant inspiration. After he was enrolled at the age of 14 in the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Mr. Vargas Llosa turned that experience into his first novel, “The Time of the Hero,” a critical account of military life published in 1963.The book was denounced by several generals, including one who claimed it was financed by Ecuador to undermine Peru’s military — all of which helped make it an immediate success.Mr. Vargas Llosa was never fully enamored, however, by his contemporaries’ magical realism. And he was disillusioned with Fidel Castro’s persecution of dissidents in Cuba, breaking from the leftist ideology that held sway for decades over many writers in Latin America.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More