Vienna Opera director collapses during Wagner performance
AFP
VIENNA- Vienna Opera's musical director Franz Welser-Moest collapsed while conducting a Wagner opera after suffering a severe attack of lumbago when he raised his baton, the prestigious opera house said Monday.
The 52-year-old slumped onto his conductor's podium Sunday at the end of the first act of the 4.5-hour long "Parsifal".
He was hospitalised but was able to return home later the same evening.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/liddybits/. Accessed via Wikipedia.
The Austrian trained as a violinist before becoming a conductor and has worked with some of the most respected orchestras around the world, including the philharmonic orchestras of Vienna and Berlin, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and the Orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles and New York.
He was voted the "orchestra chief of the year 2003" by the magazine Musical America.
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