Japanese maestro Ozawa makes comeback after surgery

Celebrated Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa said Tuesday he would make a full comeback onstage in August with a series of 70-minute opera performances in the Japanese mountain city of Matsumoto.The 75-year-old maestro, who underwent surgery on oesophageal cancer last year and has been treated after hernia surgery in January, said he would conduct the Saito Kinen Orchestra on August 21, 23, 25 and 27.They will perform Bela Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" at the 20th Saito Kinen Festival, an annual classical music festival in Matsumoto.

Acclaimed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and has cancelled his schedule for at least six months to undergo treatment, his office said Thursday.Ozawa, the 74-year-old musical director at the Vienna State Opera, was diagnosed with the illness in a medical check-up last month, his office said.He will cancel his engagements -- starting with a concert at the Vienna State Opera on January 15 -- until at least June, but hopes to make "a full recovery" by August, said a spokeswoman for his office.

Acclaimed Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa said Friday he was recovering well from cancer but decided to cancel more engagements to concentrate on treatment.Ozawa, the 74-year-old musical director at the Vienna State Opera, had moved "one more step" towards a full recovery from oesophageal cancer, his office said in a statement.But Ozawa had decided to follow doctors' instructions and cancel an opera in Matsumoto, central Japan, in August and a series of concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in Europe and Japan.

Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa has cancelled all performances until August to focus on recovering from back surgery, according to his office.The 75-year-old former principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera had been scheduled for 10 performances in March and April in Japan, New York, Paris and Vienna.But he decided to cancel all the dates to concentrate on rehabilitation after an operation this month to treat lower back pain, his office said."The next concert where he will direct will be in August," said an office spokeswoman.

The prestigious Vienna State Opera will this week mark -- along with the rest of the world of classical music -- the 100th anniversary of the death of composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911).The Austrian capital's legendary Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Italian maestro Daniele Gatti, will perform Mahler's last completed symphony, the Ninth, in a special memorial concert in the opera house on Wednesday.

In the opera world, all eyes will be on Austrian capital on Monday when Mexican star tenor Rolando Villazon makes his stage comeback at the Vienna State Opera.Villazon, 37, who has now had to put his career on ice twice due to problems with his vocal chords, will sing the role of Nemorino in a one-off performance of Donzetti's best-loved comic opera, "L'elisir d'amore".He is then due to sing the role of Lensky in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" in Berlin later this month.

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We were sad to learn that Arijit Guha, the 32-year-old graduate student whose clever online campaign "Poopstrong" helped convince his health insurer to cover $118,000 worth of outstanding medical bills, recently died of colon cancer.