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I note the passing of British tenor David Rendall, father of rising star baritone Huw Montague Rendall and husband of distinguished mezzo-soprano Diana Montague. I always very much enjoyed his voice while recognising that its individual timbre and quite pronounced - but very regular and properly pulsed - vibrato were not to all tastes. I especially like him in the Lombard "Così fan tutte" recording and with Janet Baker in the ENO "Mary Stuart". I met him many years ago when I was living and working in southern Africa; he was singing Almaviva to Piero Cappuccilli's Figaro in Pretoria and enjoyed his company after the performance with some friends. I contacted him a few years ago and asked if he remembered - not me, of course; quite understandably - but certainly the performances in which Cappuccilli irritated him by distracting both the audience and him with some comic sword play during his arias - a bit of divo one-upmanship, obviously. His career in many famous venues, including the Met, was not without incident; here I quote ChatGPT and Wikipedia: "In 1998, during a rehearsal for I Pagliacci with Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera, Rendall (singing the role of Canio) accidentally stabbed baritone Kimm Julian, who played Silvio. The problem arose when the switchblade-style prop didn’t retract as intended — its mechanism jammed, and Julian ended up with a three-inch stab wound in the abdomen. Julian received emergency medical treatment and fortunately made a full recovery. Rendall wasn’t legally penalized; authorities deemed it an accident, and he was cleared of wrongdoing. The production replaced the faulty prop with a retractable toy knife and continued.

Despite this being his most public mishap, Rendall had another serious on-stage accident in April 2005 in Copenhagen, where a collapsing set injured him and adversely affected his future performances."