Opera Singers Killed In Alps Germanwings Flight 9525 Crash

The late Oleg Bryjak seen here in Los Angeles
 with Plácido Domingo.

"A stunned German town mourned 16 students who went down aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 on their way home Tuesday from a Spanish exchange, while the opera world grieved for two singers who were returning from performing in Barcelona - one of them with her baby. 'This is surely the blackest day in the history of our town,' a visibly shaken Mayor Bodo Klimpel said after the western town of Haltern was shocked by news that 16 students from the local high school and two of their teachers had been on the plane. They had just spent a week in Spain. Also among the passengers were two German singers who had been in Barcelona to perform in Richard Wagner's Siegfried at the city's Gran Teatre del Liceu - bass baritone Oleg Bryjak, a member since 1996 of the ensemble at Duesseldorf's Deutsche Oper am Rhein opera house, and Duesseldorf-born contralto Maria Radner. 'We have lost a great performer and a great person in Oleg Bryjak. We are stunned,' said Christoph Meyer, director of Deutsche Oper am Rhein. Radner took the Germanwings flight with her husband and baby, Liceu director of communications Joan Corbera said. He added that the theater's employees will hold two minutes of silence on Wednesday in the singers' honor." [Source]

Contralto Maria Radner, seen here performing in Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera House 
under conductor Antonio Pappano, was among the crash victims. (Photo: Clive Barda)