Deaths (Obituaries)

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      David Jacobs, ‘Dallas’ and ‘Knots Landing’ Creator, Dies at 84

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      As the creator of “Dallas” and its spinoff “Knots Landing,” he did more than anyone to change the landscape of nighttime TV.David Jacobs, who more than anyone invented the modern prime-time soap opera when he created “Dallas,” the long-running CBS series about an amoral oil baron and his feuding family, and followed it a year later with “Knots Landing,” died on Sunday in Burbank, Calif. He was 84.His son, Aaron, said he died in a hospital from complications of a series of infections. Mr. Jacobs had also recently received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.Mr. Jacobs had written for several television shows when, in 1977, he pitched CBS on what he called an American version of “Scenes From a Marriage,” Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 mini-series, which was later turned into a film. His story shifted the location from Sweden to a Southern California cul-de-sac with a focus on four middle-class couples.CBS showed some interest but passed, asking him to write a glitzier saga instead.“Which meant Texas to me,” Mr. Jacobs recalled in a 2008 interview with the Television Academy. Working with Michael Filerman, an executive at Lorimar Productions, he wrote a script about the wealthy Ewing family.When Mr. Filerman sent the script to CBS, he gave it the title “Dallas.”“‘Dallas?’” Mr. Jacobs recalled saying to Mr. Filerman. “‘Kennedy was killed in Dallas. I don’t want to do this in Dallas. First of all, it was oil people and Houston is the oil city. Dallas is the banking city.’ And Michael said, ‘Who knows that? Who cares? Do you want to watch a show called “Houston”? ’”The title “Dallas” stuck, and the series made its debut in 1978, becoming a megahit for CBS. It took its basic cues from the daytime soap-opera genre — long-running melodramas with core casts that were originally known for being sponsored by soap manufacturers.The cast of “Dallas” featured Larry Hagman as the oil baron, J.R. Ewing; Patrick Duffy as his brother Bobby; Barbara Bel Geddes and Jim Davis as their parents, Miss Ellie and Jock; Linda Gray as Sue Ellen, J.R.’s wife; and Victoria Principal as Pamela, Bobby’s wife.The cast of “Dallas” in a 1979 promotional photo. Front row, from left: Charlene Tilton, Jim Davis and Linda Gray. Back row, from left: Patrick Duffy, Victoria Principal, Barbara Bel Geddes and Larry Hagman. CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesIn a cliffhanger to end the third season, J.R. was shot. In the fourth episode of the next season, the identity of his assailant was revealed:It was his sister-in-law and mistress, Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby). The episode generated a 53.3 Nielsen rating, a record at the time for an entertainment program. (That record would be broken in 1983 by the final episode of “M*A*S*H.”)Mr. Jacobs soon had another series in mind, about a postapocalyptic utopia. But when he pitched it to CBS, a top executive demurred, opened a desk drawer and handed Mr. Jacobs his old script about the couples in the cul-de-sac. It was “Knots Landing.”“Is there any way we can make this a ‘Dallas’ spinoff?” Mr. Jacobs recalled the executive asking.Mr. Jacobs spun off two recurring characters from “Dallas” — Gary, another Ewing brother (played by Ted Shackelford), and his wife, Valene (Joan Van Ark) — and added an ensemble of other characters. “Knots Landing” made its debut in 1979 and became another long-running hit, lasting 14 seasons.Joan Van Ark and Ted Shackelford as husband and wife in a scene from “Knots Landing,” a long-running “Dallas” spinoff also created by Mr. Jacobs. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Arnold Jacobs was born on Aug. 12, 1939, in Baltimore. His father, Melvin, was a bookie, a cabdriver and an insurance salesman, among other things. His mother, Ruth (Levenson) Jacobs, was a homemaker.By his own account, Mr. Jacobs disliked school until he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, from which he graduated with a degree in fine arts in about 1961. But while he had artistic talent, he said, he recognized that he wasn’t talented enough to make a living as a painter.He moved to New York City and turned to writing. Over the next dozen or so years, he said, he wrote entries for The Book of Knowledge, a children’s encyclopedia; articles about art, architecture and other subjects for various publications, including The New York Times Magazine; biographies of Beethoven and Charlie Chaplin; and short stories for magazines like Redbook and Cosmopolitan.Mr. Jacobs moved to Los Angeles after his divorce from Lynn Oliansky to stay close to their daughter, Albyn, and found work in TV.He was hired early on to rewrite scripts. One was an episode of “Delvecchio,” a 1976-77 crime drama starring Judd Hirsch as a detective studying to be a lawyer. (A producer threw the script in a garbage can.) Another, in 1976, was for “The Blue Knight,” a police procedural starring George Kennedy.Mr. Jacobs was hired as a staff writer for “The Blue Knight,” but the series was canceled soon after. It had been a Lorimar production, and the company’s Mr. Filerman gave him a deal that led to the creation of “Dallas” and “Knots Landing.”Mr. Jacobs at a TV Land Awards ceremony in 2009 in Los Angeles. His series “Knots Landing” received a 30th-anniversary award. With him, from left, were three of the show’s stars: Donna Mills, Michelle Phillips and Michele Lee.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesThe key casting decision in “Dallas” was who would play J.R. In the academy interview, Mr. Jacobs recalled being on a conference call with the actor Robert Foxworth, who was being considered for the role.When Mr. Foxworth asked how the ruthless J.R. could be made more sympathetic, Mr. Jacobs recalled, he told him that was not going to happen. “He likes being the son of a bitch,” Mr. Jacobs said, “and he believes that you get them before they get you.”Mr. Foxworth turned down the role, but he would later be was one of the stars of “Falcon Crest,” another prime-time soap.“Dallas” ended its long run in 1991, “Knots Landing” in 1993. Mr. Jacobs was a creator, producer and executive producer of several other series through the 1990s, but none were as successful. He returned to his roots as an executive producer of “Dallas: The Early Years,” a 1986 TV movie presented as a prequel to the series; ”Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac,” a 1997 mini-series; and “Knots Landing Reunion: Together Again,” a 2005 TV movie.A “Dallas” reboot ran from 2012 to 2014 on TNT. But Mr. Jacobs told Forbes.com that he had been excluded from any creative input into the series and later said in an interview with The Daily Beat that he had hated it.In addition to his son, Mr. Jacobs is survived by his wife, Diana (Pietrocarli) Jacobs; his daughters, Albyn Hall and Molly Jacobs; and two granddaughters.In 1981, the debut of “Dynasty” — a much more opulently staged prime-time soap starring Joan Collins, Linda Evans and John Forsythe — provided formidable competition for “Dallas.”“‘Dynasty’ was a better expression of second Reagan administration values than ‘Dallas,’” Mr. Jacobs wrote in an article for The Times in 1990, “because, while ‘Dallas’ was about the quest for money, ‘Dynasty’ was about the things that money could buy. In ‘Dallas,’ money was a tool, a way of keeping score.”He added: “During almost any other period, ‘Dynasty’ would have been regarded as more vulgar than ‘Dallas.’ In the mid-’80s, however, ‘Dynasty’ was widely viewed as the classier of the two shows.” More

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      Léa Garcia, Who Raised Black Actors’ Profile in Brazil, Dies at 90

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      Best known internationally for her breakout performance in the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” she challenged racial stereotypes over a seven-decade career.Léa Garcia, a pioneering actress who brought new visibility and respect to Black actors in Brazil after her breakout performance in the Academy Award-winning 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” died on Aug. 15 in Gramado, a mountain resort town in southern Brazil. She was 90.Her death, of cardiac complications, was confirmed by her family on her Instagram account. At her death, in a hospital, she was in Gramado to receive a lifetime achievement award at that town’s film festival. Her son Marcelo Garcia, who was also her manager, accepted the honor in her place.Over a prolific career that began in the 1950s, Ms. Garcia amassed more than 100 credits in theater, film and television, from her early years with an experimental Black theater group to her later prominence on television productions, like the popular 1976 telenovela “Escrava Isaura” (“Isaura: Slave Girl”), based on an 1875 novel by the abolitionist writer Bernardo Guimarães; it was seen in more than 80 countries.Recounting her career in a 2022 interview with the Brazilian magazine Ela, Ms. Garcia said she felt blessed by her success. “I often say that the gods embraced me,” she said. “Things always arrived for me without me running after them.”Still, laboring to change racial perceptions in the world of film and television involved tremendous perseverance and discipline. “Much more was demanded of us,” she told Ela. “We had to arrive with the text on the tip of our tongue, always smelling good and elegant. Others could be wrong. We could not. We could play subservient characters, but we needed to show that we ourselves were not.”Léa Lucas Garcia de Aguiar was born on March 11, 1933, in Rio de Janeiro. Growing up, she was drawn to literature and aspired to be a writer. That changed one day in 1950.“I was on my way to pick up my grandmother to take her to the movies,” she recalled, “when someone came up to me and asked, ‘Would you like to work in theater?’”The voice belonged to Abdias do Nascimento, the writer, artist and Pan-Africanist activist who created Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), a Rio-based group that aimed to promote the appreciation of Afro-Brazilian culture. (The two would become a couple and had two children together.) Ms. Garcia made her stage debut in 1952 in Mr. Nascimento’s play “Rapsódia Negra” (“Black Rhapsody”).As the decade drew to a close, she took her career to a new level of international recognition when she was cast in the French director Marcel Camus’s “Black Orpheus,” a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice adapted to the frenzy of Rio’s carnival and featuring music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá. It won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1960.With its lush exuberance, the film was anything but classical in feel. “It really is not the two lovers that are the focus of interest in this film; it is the music, the movement, the storm of color,” Bosley Crowther wrote in a review in The New York Times.Even in her 80s, Ms. Garcia remained productive. Adriano DamasEven in a supporting role, Ms. Garcia showed an ability to beguile. “Léa Garcia,” Mr. Crowther wrote, “is especially provoking as the loose-limbed cousin of the soft Eurydice.”Among her other notable films was “Ganga Zumba,” the debut feature by Carlos Diegues, a pioneer in Brazil’s reformist Cinema Novo movement, which was made in 1963 but not released until 1972. She brought power and complexity to the character of Cipriana, the lover of the title character, who escapes a sugar plantation in the 17th century to lead Quilombo dos Palmares, a haven for other fugitives from slavery.“It’s not shameful to be a slave,” Ms. Garcia often said, according to family members. “It’s shameful to be a colonizer.”The pace of her career scarcely slowed over the years; she spent decades as a staple of Brazilian soap operas like “O Clone” (“The Clone”), “Anjo Mau” (“Evil Angel”), “Xica da Silva” and “Marina,” and was seen on other TV series as well.Even in her 80s, Ms. Garcia remained productive. She starred in the drama series “Baile de Máscaras” in 2019 and returned to the stage in 2022 in the play “A Vida Não é Justa” (“Life Is Not Fair”), in which she played three characters and explored themes of diversity, equality, justice and relationships.Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.In the Ela interview, Ms. Garcia discussed her hopes for her great-great-granddaughter, who was 7 months old at the time. “I hope for a fair and egalitarian country that respects diversities,” she said. “That’s what I want, and much more.”Julia Vargas Jones contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil More

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      Toto Cutugno, Singer Whose ‘L’Italiano’ Struck a Chord, Dies at 80

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      The nostalgic ballads and catchy pop songs he wrote paved the way for an international career. He sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.Toto Cutugno, an Italian singer and songwriter whose 1983 hit song “L’Italiano” became a worldwide sensation and was still hugely popular decades later, died on Tuesday in Milan. He was 80.His longtime manager, Danilo Mancuso, said the cause of Mr. Cutugno’s death, at San Raffaele Hospital, was cancer.In a career that began when he was in his late teens, Mr. Cutugno sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.“He was able to build melodies that remained stuck in the audience’s mind and heart,” Mr. Mancuso, who had worked with Mr. Cutugno for 20 years, said in a phone interview. “The refrains of his most popular songs are so melodic.”Mr. Cutugno’s career began with a stint, first as a drummer and then as a pianist, with Toto e i Tati, a small local band in Northern Italy. He soon branched out into songwriting.His talent for writing memorable songs earned him collaborations with famous French singers, like Joe Dassin, for whom he wrote “L’été Indien” and “Et si Tu N’Existais pas,” and Dalida, with whom he wrote the disco hit “Monday, Tuesday … Laissez-Moi Danser.” He also wrote songs for the French pop star Johnny Hallyday and for famed Italian singers like Domenico Modugno, Adriano Celentano, Gigliola Cinquetti and Ornella Vanoni. International stars like Celine Dion sang his songs as well.But Mr. Cutugno also found success singing his own compositions, first with Albatros, a disco band, which took third place at the Sanremo Festival of Italian Song in 1976. He then began a solo career and garnered his first national recognition in Italy in 1980, when he won the festival with “Solo Noi.”Mr. Cutugno in performance in Rome in 2002. “He was able to build melodies that remained stuck in the audience’s mind and heart,” his manager said.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe returned to the festival three years later with “L’Italiano.” He finished in fifth place, but the song, a hymn to a country straining to rebuild after World War II — marked by symbols of Italy like espresso, the Fiat Seicento and a president who had fought as a partisan during the conflict — became tremendously popular. It is still one of Italy’s best-known songs, played on television and at street festivals across the country, as well as a nostalgic reminder of their homeland for expatriates elsewhere.The song’s success paved the way for an international career: Mr. Cutugno went on to tour over the years in the United States, Europe, Turkey and Russia.“Russia was his second homeland,” said Mr. Mancuso, his manager. “The only Western entertainment that Russian televisions broadcast at the time was the Sanremo song festival, and Toto was often on, and was appreciated.”He added that Mr. Cutugno’s nostalgic tunes were reminiscent of the musical styles of Eastern Europe, and especially Russia, which made them instantly familiar to those audiences.In 2019, Mr. Cutugno’s ties to Russia got him into trouble with some Ukrainian politicians, who wanted to stop him from performing in Kyiv, the nation’s capital. Mr. Cutugno denied that he supported Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and noted that he had rejected a booking in Crimea after Russia reclaimed it in 2014. He eventually did perform in Kyiv.In 1990, Mr. Cutugno won the Eurovision Song Contest. He was one of only three Italians to have done so — the others were Ms. Cinquetti in 1964 and the rock band Maneskin in 2021. His winning song, “Insieme: 1992” (“Together: 1992”), was a ballad dedicated to the European Union and its political integration. That same year, Ray Charles agreed to sing an English-language version of a song by Mr. Cutugno at the Sanremo festival; Mr. Cutugno called the collaboration “the greatest professional satisfaction” of his lifetime.Mr. Cutugno, who was known for his emotional guitar playing and for shaking his longish black hair when he sang, also had a stint as a television presenter in Italy.Toto Cutugno was born Salvatore Cutugno on July 7, 1943, in the small town of Tendola, near Fosdinovo, in the mountains of Italy’s northwest between the regions of Tuscany and Liguria. His father, Domenico Cutugno, was a Sicilian Navy marshal, and his mother, Olga Mariani, was a homemaker.He went to secondary school in the city of La Spezia, where he grew up, and took private music lessons that included piano and accordion.He is survived by his wife, Carla Cutugno; his son, Niko; and two younger siblings, Roberto and Rosanna Cutugno. More

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      Bob Jones, Behind-the-Stage Force at Newport Festivals, Dies at 86

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      For decades he helped shape Rhode Island’s venerable folk and jazz events, presenting stars and unknowns alike. One colleague called him a “test pilot of jazz.”Bob Jones, who began as a volunteer at the Newport Folk Festival in the early 1960s before rapidly gaining the trust of its impresario, George Wein, and going on to produce the event over two decades, died on Aug. 14 in hospice care in Danbury, Conn. He was 86.His daughter Radhika Jones said the cause was complications of dementia.Mr. Jones spent a half-century with the folk festival, held every summer in Rhode Island, as well as with its companion, the Newport Jazz Festival, and other events produced by Mr. Wein. He was there when Bob Dylan outraged purists by going electric at the 1965 folk festival, and he helped persuade Mr. Wein to resurrect the festival in 1985 after a 16-year hiatus.In his autobiography, “Myself Among Others: A Life in Music” (with Nate Chinen, 2003), Mr. Wein, who started the jazz festival in 1954 and the folk version in 1959, called Mr. Jones “an indispensable member of the hierarchy of Festival Productions,” his company.Mr. Jones in 1995 with George Wein, the producer of the Newport festivals. Mr. Wein called Mr. Jones “an indispensable member of the hierarchy of Festival Productions.”Collection of George WeinLike many of the people who worked for Mr. Wein, who died in 2021, Mr. Jones performed a variety of tasks for the folk and jazz festivals. Early on, he was in charge of arranging housing for performers and getting them to the stage on time.“Our closest call this year was Miles Davis,” he told The Newport Daily News in 1966. “He arrived at the field less than 10 minutes before he was to appear onstage.”For two years in the 1960s, Mr. Jones traveled around the South and Canada in search of new talent for the folk festival with the folklorist and mandolin player Ralph Rinzler.“They found these people who weren’t in the music business, who were playing on back porches and at house parties,” said Rick Massimo, author of “I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival” (2017). “What still reverberates today is how they helped rediscover Cajun music, which wasn’t well known or appreciated outside Louisiana.”Mr. Jones and Mr. Rinzler’s roadwork led to an infusion of artists at the 1964 folk festival, including the singer and songwriter Jimmy Driftwood, the banjo player Frank Proffitt, the balladeer Almeda Riddle, the bottleneck guitarist and blues singer Mississippi Fred McDowell and the fiddler and singer Glen Ohrlin.Mr. Jones was also the road manager for international tours, arranged by Mr. Wein, that featured Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington in the 1960s and ’70s and Sarah Vaughan in the ‘80s.“Bob was an intelligent and low-key person who was unfazed by chaos and worked really well with artists,” Mr. Chinen, the editorial director of the public radio station WRTI in Philadelphia, said in a phone interview. “So you can imagine he was the right type of person to take Monk around the world.”Robert Leslie Jones was born on May 11, 1937, in Boston. His father, Edward, was an electrician, and his mother, Florence (Foss) Jones, was a homemaker.He entered Boston University’s junior college in 1956 and received his associate arts degree two years later, around the time he moved with his sister Helen into an apartment above Cafe Yana, one of the coffeehouses at the heart of the Boston-Cambridge area’s folk music scene.He was intrigued by the music, and, having some talent, began performing, favoring Woody Guthrie songs like “Do Re Mi.” He also took on the background role of organizing hootenannies, and found he enjoyed it.He withdrew from Boston University’s bachelor’s degree program in 1960 and was soon drafted into the Army; a conscientious objector, he served stateside as an Army medic. After his discharge, he continued to play music in the Boston area.In 1964, he was featured, along with Phil Ochs, Lisa Kindred and Eric Anderson, on an album, “New Folks, Vol. 2,” released on the Vanguard label. Mr. Jones in performance at Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass., in 1968. He was a folk singer before he began his long career behind the scenes.Charlie FrizzellOnce he joined Mr. Wein’s staff in about 1965, Mr. Jones became involved in nearly everything in the Wein empire, including the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France, and the Kool Jazz Festivals — stadium shows around the country that he ran from 1976 to 1985 as technical producer from a base in Cincinnati.In 1985, Mr. Jones became the top producer of the Newport Folk Festival, which had been dormant since 1969, following the gate-crashing that had disrupted that year’s jazz festival, when rock acts like Led Zeppelin and Sly and the Family Stone joined the bill. The jazz festival moved to New York City in 1972, where it continued under various names for three decades. (Mr. Wein brought jazz back to Newport in 1981, but the folk festival did not revive as quickly.)In his book, Mr. Wein credited Mr. Jones — with part-time help from his daughters, Radhika and Nalini — with helping to restore the folk festival to life. Asked what she and her sister, both teenagers at the time, had done, Radhika Jones, the editor in chief of Vanity Fair, said, “My guess is that George saw that a younger generation was enthused by it, which gave him a sense that this was something that would draw an audience.”The festival lineup that year included Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, Judy Collins, Dave Van Ronk, Doc and Merle Watson, Arlo Guthrie, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. A year later, the festival became a platform for a future star: the bluegrass singer and fiddler Alison Kraus, who was 15.Mr. Jones was long immersed in the jazz festival, as a producer and production manager, with Mr. Wein retaining the title of lead producer. He was also involved in the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, known as Jazz Fest, which Mr. Wein also produced.“Bob was like a test pilot of jazz, always smooth and calm,” Quint Davis, the current producer and director of Jazz Fest, said. “His brain was like a Univac. He had all the knowledge to make a show work.”Mr. Jones’s active involvement in production ended in early 2004 with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which left him mostly paralyzed and breathing through a ventilator. He recovered enough to stay on as an adviser and mentor through 2009; his daughter Nalini, who had been his assistant, became an associate producer and helped run the folk festival from 2004 to 2009.When Mr. Jones was able to return to the Newport site in August 2004, he was carried onto the stage by a forklift.“He loved logistics,” Nalini Jones said, “and he looked delighted.”Mr. Jones at Newport in 2015. His active involvement in production ended in 2004 with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barre syndrome.Alan NahigianIn addition to his daughters, he is survived by his wife, Marguerite (Suares) Jones; his son, Christopher; three grandchildren; and his sisters, Helen von Schmidt and Marcia McCarthy.In 1984, Mr. Jones sang at Symphony Hall in Boston at a reunion concert of performers who had worked at the storied folk music venue Club 47. Billed as Robert L. Jones, he was on a program with Richie Havens, Tom Rush and others.“We were stunned,” Radhika Jones said. “I was 12 at the time, but we really didn’t realize he’d been a performer. He’d sung to us, and we listened to folk music at home.“It was really special to see him onstage. This was a part of him we started to discover.” More

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      Ron Cephas Jones, Emmy Winner for ‘This Is Us,’ Dies at 66

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      After facing homelessness in his youth, he became an admired theater and television actor, playing tough and weathered but vulnerable characters.Ron Cephas Jones, an admired actor in New York theater and on several television shows, including “This Is Us,” a family drama for which he won two Emmy Awards — drawing on his troubled youth of drug addiction and temporary homelessness for inspiration — has died. He was 66.The writer and creator of “This Is Us,” Dan Fogelman, posted about Mr. Jones’s death on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Mr. Jones’s manager, Dan Spilo, told The Associated Press that Mr. Jones died from “a longstanding pulmonary issue,” but did not specify where and when he died.Mr. Jones received a double-lung transplant in 2020, after years of living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Ron Cephas Jones in 2021. Though he gained fame and two Emmy Awards for his work on television, he said, “My whole life has been the stage.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMr. Jones was known for playing characters who, like him, wrenched from past experiences of personal desperation a hard-won toughness and emotional vulnerability.On “This Is Us,” which ran on NBC from 2016 until last year and featured appearances from Mr. Jones in every season, he frequently made speeches. He played William “Shakespeare” Hill, a former drug addict with terminal cancer who connects at the end of his life with a son, Randall Pearson (played by Sterling K. Brown), whom he had left outside a fire station at birth.“On a series with no shortage of weepy story lines, William is a figure of singular pathos,” Reggie Ugwu wrote in a 2021 profile of Mr. Jones for The Times, adding, “But Jones’s soulful performance — the weather-beaten brow, the voice like brushed wool — confers a lived-in texture and depth.”Mr. Jones told the Hollywood news site Gold Derby in 2017, “I realized that so much of the man is inside of me, and my history.”For “This Is Us,” Mr. Jones received Emmy nominations for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 2017 and outstanding guest actor in a drama series in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He won the guest actor award in 2018 and 2020.His most recent star turn in the theater was in “Clyde’s,” which was written by Lynn Nottage and ran on Broadway from the fall of 2021 to the winter of 2022. It concerned a crew of ex-convicts working as sandwich makers at a truck stop. Mr. Jones played Montrellous, an elder of the group who finds a passion in his job that inspires his beleaguered colleagues.The Times called Mr. Jones “the show’s transfixing center of gravity,” capable of blending “Zen imperturbability with subtle dashes of pain and sacrifice.” He was nominated for a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play and won awards from the Drama Desk and the Drama League.In 2012, Mr. Jones played the lead in a production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” by the Public Theater that appeared in prisons and homeless shelters in addition to the company’s base near Astor Place in Manhattan.“No character in Shakespeare is as hungry for power as Richard III,” Charles Isherwood wrote in a review for The Times. “And it’s hard to think of an actor with a naturally hungrier look than Ron Cephas Jones, the tall, beanpole-thin, snakelike actor who portrays the title character.”Mr. Isherwood said Mr. Jones made “a strikingly sinister-looking Richard” and described his depiction of Richard’s mendacity as “hypnotically persuasive.”Characterizing Mr. Jones’s place in the theater world, The Times labeled him in 2012 “a stalwart New York actor” equally comfortable playing Othello or Caliban as he was playing a serial killer in a contemporary drama set on Rikers Island.Mr. Jones, right, as Caliban in the 2010 Bridge Project production of “The Tempest” at the BAM Harvey. With him are Anthony O’Donnell, left, as Trinculo and Thomas Sadoski as Stephano.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRon Cephas Jones was born on Jan. 8, 1957, in Paterson, N.J., where he grew up. He graduated from Ramapo College with a theater degree in 1978. In his youth, he had gone to Harlem to see jazz shows and plays, and he returned to New York after graduating to find a place in the art scene. He developed a heroin addiction that stalled his ambitions.He attempted to get clean during a series of moves and career changes — for four years, he was a bus driver in Los Angeles — but for a long time, nothing stuck. At one point he was arrested with 10 small bags of heroin and, he told The Times in 2021, he barely escaped serving a five-year prison sentence.He relapsed again and again, eventually prompting his mother to stop answering his phone calls. In the mid-1980s, he slept on a bench in Paterson’s Eastside Park. An uncle invited Mr. Jones to stay with him at his Harlem apartment. In 1986, he succeeded in sobering up. In 1990, he starred in his first play, “Don’t Explain” by Samuel B. Harps, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.He had a daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, in 1989 with the jazz singer Kim Lesley. Ms. Jones also became a successful actress. In the original 2015 Broadway production of “Hamilton,” she played Peggy Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law, and Maria Reynolds, his mistress. In 2020, she won an Emmy for her role in the web series “#FreeRayshawn.” In 2021, she and Mr. Jones announced the Emmy nominations together.Mr. Jones with his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, in 2021 at the series premiere of “Blindspotting,” in which she appeared.Chris Delmas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Jones smoked two packs a day for most of his life, and he kept smoking even after his emphysema diagnosis.“I was in total denial,” he told The Times in 2021. “I told myself that it would pass, or that I was just getting older. I was afraid and didn’t want to change what I wasn’t ready to change.”Other TV shows in which he made notable appearances include “Mr. Robot,” “Luke Cage” and “Lisey’s Story.” New York Times reviews of his theater work were usually enthusiastic. In 2012, Mr. Isherwood called him “commandingly grave” in John Patrick Shanley’s play “Storefront Church,” and in 2015, Laura Collins-Hughes described his performance as Prospero in “The Tempest” as “moving” and “understated.”“He moves through the world like a cool jazz man, but is also generous and a nurturer,” Ms. Nottage told The Times in 2021. “The same qualities that he brings to his acting are the qualities that he embodies in real life.”He managed to evoke that sensibility in Ms. Nottage’s play despite having recently spent two months in the hospital recovering from his lung surgery.“My whole life has been the stage,” Mr. Jones told The Times. “The idea of not performing again seemed worse to me than death.” More

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      Inga Swenson, Who Went From Stage to ‘Benson,’ Dies at 90

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      She had success on Broadway in “110 in the Shade” and other shows, but a later generation knew her from a sitcom.Inga Swenson, whose acting talent, striking looks and versatile singing voice brought her success on the Broadway stage in the 1950s and ’60s, and who years later rode a phony German accent to sitcom stardom as the cook on the long-running sitcom “Benson,” died on July 23 at a care facility in Los Angeles. She was 90.The Television Academy posted news of her death. Ms. Swenson, who studied theater at Northwestern University, started out as a stage actress. In 1953 and 1954 she and her husband, Lowell Harris, whom she had met and married while at Northwestern, appeared in productions at the Playhouse, Eagles Mere, in north central Pennsylvania, including Clifford Odets’s “The Country Girl,” in which they played a husband and wife. In November 1954 Ms. Swenson made her New York debut with an Off Broadway troupe called the Shakespearewrights, playing Olivia in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”“I had these gorgeous gowns because I was fun to costume,” Ms. Swenson told the podcast “Behind the Curtain: Broadway’s Living Legends” in 2019. “They loved a 5-foot-10 skinny woman with narrow shoulders.”That performance landed her an agent, and in 1956 she made her Broadway debut in the musical revue “New Faces of 1956.” Also in the cast was Maggie Smith, who was just beginning her storied career.Ms. Swenson’s biggest Broadway success came in 1963 when she was cast in a leading role in “110 in the Shade,” which had music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, the duo responsible for the long-running musical “The Fantasticks.” The book was by N. Richard Nash, based on his play “The Rainmaker.” Ms. Swenson was Lizzie Curry, a supposedly average-looking young woman who is beginning to think she will never find love.“The tears seem to fall interminably from the big blue eyes of Inga Swenson,” Howard Taubman wrote in his review in The New York Times, “who has to pretend that she is Lizzie, the plain Curry girl, too honest to use female wiles and too homely to attract a man. It’s quite a job of make-believe for Miss Swenson, who is attractive and talented.”Ms. Swenson in 1967 with Ivor Emmanuel, left, and Stephen Douglass, her castmates in the 1967 London production of “110 in the Shade.” She was nominated for a Tony for her performance in the show on Broadway.Getty ImagesThe show ran for 330 performances, then went on the road. It earned Ms. Swenson a Tony Award nomination for best actress in a musical. It also pitted her against the Broadway hitmaker David Merrick, who produced the show.“110 in the Shade” ended with an onstage rainstorm, and during the curtain call at a performance in April 1964 Ms. Swenson slipped on a puddle and seriously injured an ankle. The injury troubled her for months afterward, and she filed a million-dollar lawsuit against Mr. Merrick, contending that the puddle was a result of faulty set construction.Later that year, when the show traveled to San Francisco, she told The San Francisco Examiner that she and Mr. Merrick remained friends and that the suit was aimed not at him but at his insurance company. How the matter was resolved is lost in the mists of time.In any case, Ms. Swenson returned to Broadway in 1965 in “Baker Street,” a musical Sherlock Holmes yarn, earning another Tony nomination for best actress in a musical. By that point she had also begun working occasionally in the movies, including roles in “Advise & Consent” in 1962 and “The Miracle Worker,” in which she played the mother of Helen Keller, Patty Duke’s character, the same year.In 1978 she landed a recurring role in a season of the television comedy “Soap,” and when the same producing team was casting the sitcom “Benson,” a “Soap” spinoff whose title character (played by Robert Guillaume) ran a governor’s household, she auditioned, using a German accent.“I went in there, read with an accent and they fell off their chairs,” she said on the podcast. She won the role of Gretchen Kraus, a cook and perpetual thorn in Benson’s side. The show ran for eight seasons, and Ms. Swenson was nominated for the supporting-actress Emmy three times.Inga Swenson was born on Dec. 29, 1932, in Omaha to A.C.R. and Geneva Swenson. Her father was a prominent lawyer and an honorary Swedish consul, and her mother was prominent in social circles in Omaha.Her parents attended a Congregational church that had five choirs, and her performing life began when she tried out for one as a child, impressing church officials.“They learned that I had a pretty voice and I could make the parishioners weep,” she said on the podcast.Her father died in a car crash in 1948. Soon after, she landed the role of Maid Marian in her high school’s production of the operetta “Robin Hood,” which helped her through her grief.“Giving me that role saved my life,” she said. “I had something to do. I had something to think about. I had people telling me I was wonderful.”Fifteen years later, her singing was good enough to get her cast in “110 in the Shade,” despite some tough competition.“Everybody wanted to play Lizzie,” she said on “Behind the Curtain.” “When I went to audition, Barbra Streisand was there.”Ms. Swenson’s survivors include her husband and a son, Mark Harris.Ms. Swenson said she didn’t often get considered for comic roles because of her elegant looks.“People take one look and say: ‘You’re not funny,’” she said in a 1983 interview. “‘You don’t even have a funny face.’”She proved such assessments wrong on “Benson,” which was filmed in front of a live audience.“That was not phony laughter,” she said on “Behind the Curtain.” “There wasn’t a sign that went up and said ‘Laugh.’ People laughed because we were funny.” More

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      Jerry Moss, the ‘M’ of A&M Records, Is Dead at 88

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      In partnership with Herb Alpert, he turned a small independent label into a powerhouse with a roster full of superstars.Jerry Moss, who with the trumpeter Herb Alpert founded A&M Records, which at its peak from the 1960s to the ’80s was an independent powerhouse behind hits by the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson, Peter Frampton and Mr. Alpert’s group, the Tijuana Brass, among many others, has died at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 88.His family announced the death in a statement on Wednesday.Over their more than 30 years with A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert developed an eclectic roster — Cat Stevens, Carole King, Supertramp and the grunge band Soundgarden all released music there — and established the label’s reputation for being supportive of artists and treating them fairly.Sting, who signed to A&M with the Police in 1978 and has remained associated with the label throughout his career, said in an interview on Thursday that those values radiated directly from Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert.“They were gentlemen,” he said. “I think their extraordinary success was really predicated on those very human qualities — not being ruthless businessmen or kill-or-be-killed people. They were artist friendly.”Built from humble beginnings in Mr. Alpert’s garage, A&M — its name was taken from the initials of its founders’ last names — became a major force in pop music and eventually earned its founders a huge payday. In 1989, they sold A&M’s recorded music business to PolyGram for a reported $500 million (about $1.2 billion in today’s money), though Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert continued to manage the label until 1993. In 2000, they sold Rondor, their music publishing catalog, to Universal Music for an estimated $400 million.Mr. Alpert set the tone for how the label interacted with musicians after what he said in an interview on Thursday were his own unhappy experiences, early in his career, with big labels that had treated him “like a number.” That approach also gave some negotiating leverage to A&M, which in its early days lacked the financial resources of its corporate competitors in pursuing new acts.Mr. Moss, who began his career promoting pop and doo-wop records to radio stations, ran the business side of A&M with its longtime president, Gil Friesen, who died in 2012. But he also insisted on fair dealings with artists.“You can’t force people to do a certain kind of music,” Mr. Moss said in an interview with The New York Times in 2010. “They make their best music when they are doing what they want to do, not what we want them to do.”Early on, A&M signed the country singer Waylon Jennings, who cut a handful of singles but disagreed about his career trajectory with Mr. Alpert, who favored pop material. When Mr. Jennings got an offer from RCA Victor’s Nashville office, A&M agreed to release him from his deal.“I looked at Jerry and said, ‘This guy is going to be a big artist.’ He said, ‘I know,’” Mr. Alpert recalled. “At that point I realized we could be a big success with that attitude. We let Waylon out of the contract. He went on to a great career, and we remained friends with him.”Mr. Moss with one of A&M’s most successful artists, Janet Jackson, with platinum albums for her 1986 album, “Control.” The label’s eclectic roster also included (among many other artists) the Police, Peter Frampton and the Carpenters.Lester Cohen/Getty ImagesJerome Sheldon Moss was born in the Bronx on May 8, 1935, to Irving and Rose Moss. His father was a department store salesman, his mother a homemaker.Mr. Moss graduated from Brooklyn College in 1957. While waiting tables at a resort, he met Marvin Cane, one of the founders of Coed Records, who offered him a job pitching records to radio stations for $75 a week. His first big success was the doo-wop ballad “16 Candles” by the Crests, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop singles chart in late 1958.Mr. Moss moved to Los Angeles intending to enter the television business, but instead he soon set himself up again as a radio promoter. It was there that he met Mr. Alpert, who had worked as a songwriter and was attempting to establish himself as a vocalist under the name Dore Alpert.In 1962, the two young men went into business together, investing $100 apiece. They released “Tell It to the Birds,” a single credited to Dore Alpert, on a label they called Carnival.After learning that another record company was already using that name, they settled on A&M for their next release: “The Lonely Bull,” a trumpet-led instrumental with atmospheric sounds recorded at a bullfighting ring in Mexico. They borrowed $35,000 to press the single, which went to No. 6 and immediately put A&M on the map.By 1966, A&M was as successful as any label in pop music. That year, Mr. Alpert and the Tijuana Brass outsold the Beatles and had four albums in the top 10 at the same time. The group dominated the easy-listening market of the era with hits like “A Taste of Honey” and “Spanish Flea”; Mr. Alpert himself had a No. 1 vocal hit in 1968 with “This Guy’s in Love With You.” A&M also signed the Brazilian pianist and bandleader Sérgio Mendes and his band Brasil ’66, which toured with Mr. Alpert.In 1966 the label moved into Charlie Chaplin’s former film studio lot in Hollywood. A&M later signed another huge soft-pop act, the Carpenters, and, through deals with other labels, put out records by Cat Stevens (who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam) and Carole King, including her blockbuster 1971 LP, “Tapestry.”In 1976, A&M released Mr. Frampton’s double live album “Frampton Comes Alive!,” which became one of the defining rock hits of the decade, eventually going eight times platinum. In the 1980s, A&M signed Ms. Jackson, whose album “Control” (1986) went to No. 1 and established her as a major talent.After selling A&M, Mr. Moss and Mr. Alpert briefly ran another label, Almo Sounds, whose artists included Gillian Welch and Garbage. The founders were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as nonperformers in 2006.Mr. Moss’s survivors include his wife, Tina Moss; two sons, Ron and Harrison; two daughters, Jennifer and Daniela; and five grandchildren.Mr. Moss at a Songwriters Hall of Fame event in New York in 2012.Theo Wargo/Getty Images North AmericaIn his later years, Mr. Moss had notable success owning racehorses. One, Giacomo — named after one of Sting’s sons — won the Kentucky Derby in 2005, at extraordinary odds. Another racehorse, Zenyatta, was named after one of the Police’s albums, “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980).Mr. Moss was active in local philanthropy. In 2020, he and his wife donated $25 million to the Music Center, a performing arts complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theater, Walt Disney Concert Hall and other spaces.But Mr. Moss said that he was at his happiest making records with Mr. Alpert.“It is the best feeling in the world,” he told The Times. “I’d turn to Herbie and say, man, what in the world did we do to deserve this?” More

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      Renata Scotto, Opera Diva Who Inhabited Roles, Dies at 89

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      A leading Italian soprano, she sang more than two dozen roles at the Metropolitan Opera and was known as a charismatic stage partner — and a demanding one.Renata Scotto, the firebrand Italian soprano and Metropolitan Opera favorite who was acclaimed for her acting and her insights into opera characters as much as for her voice, died on Wednesday in Savona, Italy. She was 89.Her son, Filippo Anselmi, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause.At her best, in roles like Puccini’s Cio-Cio San in “Madama Butterfly” and Mimì in “La Bohème,” Verdi’s Violetta in “La Traviata” and Bellini’s “Norma,” Ms. Scotto achieved a dramatic intensity that electrified audiences and elicited the highest praise from her fellow opera stars. “Renata is the closest I have ever worked with to a real singing actress,” the tenor Plácido Domingo was quoted as saying in The New York Times Magazine in 1978. “There is an emphasis, a feeling she puts behind every word she interprets.”Vocally, Ms. Scotto could not match the sensuousness of Renata Tebaldi or the astonishing technique and range of Joan Sutherland. And miscues on high notes could mar her exquisitely shaped phrases.But her charisma and stage presence made critics overlook her shortcomings. “Her voice may be a bit hard, and seldom does she get through an aria without some kind of vocal flaw, but the important thing is that when she sings, a sensitive mind is at work and a powerful personality comes through,” The New York Times’s chief music critic, Harold C. Schonberg, wrote in a review of a Scotto recital at Carnegie Hall in 1973.A Self-Confident FighterMs. Scotto long reigned as one of the most popular sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera. From 1965 to 1987, she delivered more than 300 performances in 26 roles at the Met. Her stage appearances tapered off after that, until her retirement in 2002.Armed with self-confidence, the diminutive Ms. Scotto jousted with giants of the opera world, including the general managers of La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as renowned conductors who took issue with her interpretations. “In opera, the singer comes before everything,” she said in a 1972 interview with The Times. “Many times I have had discussions, sometimes fights, and always I win.”She was equally demanding of her colleagues onstage.Ms. Scotto as Musetta in “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1980s.John Elbers/Getty ImagesIn a 1963 performance of Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” in Bergamo, Italy, the tenor Giuseppe di Stefano left her in the middle of a duet to eat an apple in the wings; when he returned, Ms. Scotto slapped him across the face. (The scene called for only a pinch on the cheek, and the tenor’s shocked reaction alerted the audience that something was amiss.)In another incident, Ms. Scotto unleashed a verbal barrage at Luciano Pavarotti for pushing her and other cast members aside to take unscripted solo calls during and after a performance of Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” at the San Francisco Opera in 1979.Yet Ms. Scotto’s combination of talent and hard work drew admiration from fellow singers. “She’s unique in vocal coloration,” the baritone Sherrill Milnes told The Times Magazine. “Even if you don’t understand the language, you feel it. She will also sacrifice vocal beauty to get the word or the emotional intention across.”Renata Scotto was born in humble circumstances on Feb. 24, 1934, in Savona, then a small Italian fishing town on the Mediterranean coast west of Genoa. Her father, Giuseppe, was a police officer; her mother, Santina, was a seamstress. When Savona came under Allied bombardment during World War II, Renata, along with her mother and her older sister, Luciana, took refuge in a nearby Alpine village, Tovo San Giacomo.An Early StartEven as a child, she showed signs of the diva to come.In Tovo San Giacomo, she would stand by her bedroom window and regale passers-by with the latest songs favored by the leading Italian tenor, Beniamino Gigli. The villagers applauded and often tossed her candy. “You see, I never sang for nothing in my life,” she noted in her 1984 memoir, “Scotto: More Than a Diva,” written with Octavio Roca.Ms. Scotto in front of the Duomo in Milan in 1967.Mario De Biasi/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesWhen she was 12, she was invited by an uncle to her first opera — Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” with Tito Gobbi in the title role — at the Teatro Chiabrera in Savona. “Gobbi the great singer and Gobbi the great actor made me decide that night that I would be an opera singer,” she recalled.As a teenager, Ms. Scotto was sent to Milan for voice and piano lessons. The only lodging her family could afford was at a Canossian convent, which she described as “somewhere between a jail and a very austere kindergarten.” The mother superior lectured her on the banality of secular music, and a nun tried to steal her music scores.But outside the convent, her teachers, especially the soprano Mafalda Favero, recognized her talent and helped bring about her career. Several years later, she studied with the Spanish former soprano Mercedes Llopart — who, Ms. Scotto said, “really taught me how to sing.”Ms. Scotto made her operatic debut in her hometown in 1952 at age 18, singing Verdi’s Violetta. She appeared the next day in the same role at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan. A year later, she made her first appearance at La Scala in Catalani’s “La Wally,” singing the role of Walter. Skeptics on La Scala’s staff considered her too short, at 4 feet 11 inches, to play Walter. They also forced her to wear a plastic nose because her own was supposedly too small. But audiences wildly applauded her performances.Ms. Scotto’s international breakthrough came in 1957 at the Edinburgh Festival, where La Scala staged its production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.” Maria Callas sang the lead role of Amina in the first four performances covered by her contract, but she bowed out of an unscheduled fifth performance, pleading illness. Ms. Scotto then replaced her to great acclaim.“I became a celebrity, I could choose my roles,” Ms. Scotto recalled. “The applause at the end would not stop, with 10, 12 solo calls.” But the episode ignited a lengthy feud between the two divas, stoked by media gossip and overwrought opera fans.Ms. Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti in “La Traviata” in 1965.Reg Wilson/ShutterstockAt La Scala in 1970, Ms. Scotto sang the role of Elena for the first time in a new production of Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani.” Ms. Callas, who had performed the same role almost 20 years before and retired in the mid-1960s, was in the audience. As soon as Ms. Scotto walked onstage, a claque of Callas fanatics began yelling “Maria, Maria!” and “Viva Callas!”Ms. Scotto continued to perform despite the frequent interruptions. But afterward, in an interview in her dressing room, she erupted in fury: “Let them get Callas to come and do ‘Vespri’ if she can sing.”A worse incident occurred at the Metropolitan Opera on opening night in 1981, with Ms. Scotto in the title role of “Norma” and Mr. Domingo as Pollione. Though Ms. Callas had died four years before, a band of her rabid followers began shouting her name as soon as Ms. Scotto walked onstage. At intermission, she broke down in tears and had to be persuaded by Mr. Domingo to return and finish the performance. Four hecklers were later arrested.Scotto vs. the MetEven as a young soprano on the rise, Ms. Scotto demonstrated self-assurance in dealing with management at the great opera houses. In 1964, when La Scala’s general manager, Antonio Ghiringhelli, withdrew his promise to cast her as Violetta in a new production of “La Traviata” directed by Franco Zeffirelli, she vowed never to perform there as long as Mr. Ghiringhelli remained. (She did not stick to that vow.)She similarly challenged the Met’s strong-willed general manager, Rudolf Bing. Ms. Scotto complained that in the three seasons after her 1965 debut, she was always offered the same operas: “Traviata,” “Butterfly,” “L’Elisir” and Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” When Mr. Bing refused her any new roles, she left the Met two seasons later after meeting her contractual obligations. The New York press cast her as imperious: “If the Met Won’t Sing Her Tune, Goodbye Scotto,” a New York Times headline read.But once Mr. Bing’s tenure ended in 1972, Ms. Scotto was invited back to the Met. Upon her return in the fall of 1974, her first role was Elena in “Vespri,” conducted by James Levine.“Renata is a direct descendant of the great, expressive Italian sopranos,” said Mr. Levine, who became the Met’s music director in 1976. (Mr. Levine, who was fired by the Met in 2018 over claims of sexual misconduct, died in 2021.) The two got along famously, and the ensuing decade proved to be Ms. Scotto’s glory years.Ms. Scotto, left, conducting a master class with the soprano Brenda Rae and the pianist In Sun Suh at Symphony Space in New York in 2007.Jennifer Taylor for The New York TimesHer artistry and popular appeal reached such heights that The Times declared: “From all appearances, the New York opera season of 1976-77 will be the season of Renata Scotto.” The previous summer, she had drawn an estimated 100,000 people to a concert performance of “Madama Butterfly” in Central Park. Early in 1976, she became the first soprano to perform all three leading roles in Puccini’s three one-act operas, “Il Trittico,” at the Met in the same evening.In 1977, Ms. Scotto broke new ground with a live telecast — the first installment of the long-running PBS series “Great Performances at the Met” — performing in “La Bohème” as Mimì, with Mr. Pavarotti in the role of Rodolfo. As she noted, the broadcast reached more people in a single night than had seen Puccini’s opera since its premiere in 1896.But she was so appalled by her heavy appearance that she went on a diet, losing 30 pounds and keeping them off the rest of her career. “Some people worry that losing weight might hurt the voice,” she said. “I say nonsense: That is a myth to protect the fat singers.”‘You Must Be a Complete Performer’With Mr. Levine conducting, Ms. Scotto gave deeply etched performances in “Norma” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” As she explained in a 1976 interview with The Times: “A singer has to give emotion to the audience, and for that you must be a complete performer, not just a good singer and not just a good actress.”This approach endeared her even to critics who faulted her vocal miscues. In an October 1976 review of Ms. Scotto’s performance as Leonora in “Il Trovatore,” Mr. Schonberg cited her rendering of the aria “D’amor sull’ali rosee” as an example: “Miss Scotto scooped her way through it and had trouble with the tessitura. It was not a distinguished example of vocal technique. But Miss Scotto was able to get away with it because of the style she brought to the aria, the conviction with which she sang it,” Mr. Schonberg wrote. “Personality sometimes can count for more than voice alone.”But as Ms. Scotto’s singing talents eroded in her last years on the opera stage, critics asserted that not even first-rate acting could compensate. In a 1986 review of “Madama Butterfly,” the Times critic Donal Henahan wrote that her performance “followed a pattern we have come to expect from the soprano in the late years of a long career: ardently and sometimes shrewdly acted, though erratically and sometimes painfully sung.”Ms. Scotto, right, with Claudia Catania in “Madama Butterfly” at the Met in 1986.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMs. Scotto married a violinist in the La Scala orchestra, Lorenzo Anselmi, in 1960, and they had two children, Laura and Filippo. They survive her, as do two grandchildren.Mr. Anselmi abandoned his playing career to become his wife’s voice coach, musical sounding board and business manager. “The biggest decision that a man can make is to give up his own career to dedicate himself to his wife’s,” Ms. Scotto said. He died in 2021.After retiring as a diva, Ms. Scotto directed a number of operas to modest praise. She also gained renown as a voice teacher.Her advice was often practical. She used to remind her students of an admonition from her first voice teacher, Ms. Favero, that it was necessary to reserve vocal stamina for emotional scenes.She also urged her students to draw on their own life experiences, especially family relationships. She cited as an example how memories of her mother, Santina, helped her interpret Mimì in “La Bohème”: “I would understand Mimì’s sweet desperation and her happiness by remembering Santina the seamstress as she worked and sang.”Alex Marshall More