Spanish poet wins Cervantes literature prize

MADRID (AP) — Spanish poet and essayist Jose Manuel Caballero Bonald has won the 2012 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honor.

Education Minister Jose Ignacio Wert said Thursday the 86-year-old was chosen for the contribution his life-long work has made to enriching Spanish-language literature.

The €125,000 ($167,000) prize generally alternates between Spanish and Latin American writers. Last year, it went to Chilean poet Nicanor Parra.

First handed out in 1976, previous winners include Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, and Nobel prize winners Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru and Spain's late Camilo Jose Cela.

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Review: 'Golden Age' offers a sneak pique at opera

NEW YORK (AP) — Jealous sniping has always been in fashion, whatever the century.

The backstage passions and vanities of a quartet of popular opera singers, plus a revered diva and a couple of renowned composers illuminate the New York City premiere of "Golden Age," Terrence McNally's play about an important evening in the life of 19th-century Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini.

A mischievously humorous production opened Tuesday night at Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. Opera buff McNally, a four-time Tony Award-winner, has previously explored the behind-the-scenes drama of classical performers, notably in the darker 1995 "Master Class," a tribute to Maria Callas.

"Golden Age" is set on Jan. 24, 1835, in the backstage area beneath the Theatre Italien opera house in Paris, at the premiere of Bellini's new opera, "I Puritani." It was his last work.

With a bit of poetic and factual license, McNally gives his characters a variety of informed discussions, sprinkled with insider opera jokes, covering musical techniques, snipes at rival performers, and romantic and professional jealousies and betrayals.

He clever manages to insert the ghost of Callas, even though she wasn't born until nine decades later, through the formidable personality of outspoken, formidable mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran, (Bebe Neuwirth, grandly imperious and eloquent.)

Director Walter Bobbie gets around the fact that none of his cast can sing operatically by sending them up a sweeping staircase to the opera house wings, where they disappear offstage, and their singing is voiced by professional opera recordings (including Callas at least once, for Malibran.)

Lee Pace holds the stage with aplomb as Bellini, portraying the youthful, already-successful, but dying Sicilian composer as alternately confident and nerve-wracked. Bellini nervously paces about, complaining about critics, second-guessing his work, reassuring his performers between acts and falling into reveries as he conducts along with the upstairs opera.

Luigi Lablache, the bass, is portrayed with staunch spirit by Ethan Phillips, and Eddie Kaye Thomas is brightly confident as tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini. Lorenzo Pisoni is quite dashing and comical as egotistical, lady-killer baritone Antonio Tamburini. His excessive pants-stuffing leads Bellini to proclaim jestingly, "This is the theatre. We wear our hearts on our sleeves and our cucumbers in our pants!"

Dierdre Friel gives a spirited air to temperamental soprano Giulia Grisi. Neuwirth drily delivers one of the play's funniest lines, about a Grisi tantrum, "Rivalry is strong medicine." Will Rogers is humble and protective as Bellini's lover, Florimo, movingly recalling an evening of carousing with a then-healthy Vincent that gives a glimpse of Bellini's creative process.

Renowned composer Rossini, portrayed with panache by F. Murray Abraham, also briefly visits Bellini backstage. (George Morfogen is taking over the role of Rossini on Dec. 11.) Coco Monroe charmingly rounds out the cast as a young page who races around Santo Loquasto's elegant set delivering plot-advancing notes.

In "Golden Age," McNally provides a fascinating, authentic-sounding glimpse of the passions and piques of top-notch performers as they struggle to get themselves — and one another — through the pressure-cooker nerves of a major opening-night performance.

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London's Dickens Museum reopens after makeover

LONDON (AP) — Charles Dickens' London home has gone from "Bleak House" to "Great Expectations."

For years, the four-story brick row house where the author lived with his young family was a dusty and slightly neglected museum, a mecca for Dickens scholars but overlooked by most visitors to London.

Now, after a 3 million pound ($4.8 million) makeover, it has been restored to bring the writer's world to life. The house reopens next week, and its director says it aims to look "as if Dickens had just stepped out."

"The Dickens Museum felt for many years a bit like Miss Havisham, covered in dust," said museum director Florian Schweizer, who slips references to Dickens' work seamlessly into his speech. Miss Havisham is the reclusive character central to the plot of "Great Expectations."

Now, after a revamp code-named — inevitably — "Great Expectations," the house is transformed.

Or, Schweizer said Wednesday, quoting that novel: "I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape."

Few authors remain as widely quoted, read and adapted as Dickens is 200 years after his birth. Characters such as Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Pip and Miss Havisham, Fagin and Oliver Twist, are known to millions around the world.

And no writer is more closely associated with London than Dickens, whose accounts of Victorian workhouses, debtors' prisons and the urban poor embarrassed the establishment into acting to alleviate poverty.

He lived all over the city in his impoverished youth and increasingly affluent adulthood, but the house at 48 Doughty Street in the Bloomsbury area of London is his only home in the city to survive.

Dickens lived in the house between 1837 and 1839, a short but fruitful period that saw the birth of his first two children. It's the site where he wrote "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Oliver Twist," going in the process from jobbing journalist to rising author whose serialized stories were gobbled up by a growing fan base.

Dickens leased the simple but elegant Georgian house, built in 1807, for 80 pounds a year.

The restored museum has all the modern trappings, including audio-guides, a "learning center" and a cafe. There also is a temporary exhibition of costumes from Mike Newell's new film adaptation of "Great Expectations," starring Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes.

But at its heart it is a house — the home of a proud young family man. Visitors can see the blue-walled dining room where Dickens entertained his friends, complete with original sideboard and a portrait of the 25-year-old author looking, it has to be said, pretty pleased with himself.

"It's rather Byronic," Schweizer said. "Not the Victorian sage with a beard that we think of."

Upstairs are the drawing room where Dickens moved guests to laughter and tears with readings from his works — visitors can hear actor Simon Callow do the honors on recordings — and the bedroom where his sister-in-law Mary died at the age of 17, a tragedy that may have influenced the many death scenes in Dickens' novels.

The rooms are furnished with Dickens' own possessions — his writing desk and chair, his wardrobe and shaving kit, copies of his books annotated in his cramped handwriting.

"We're trying to make it feel like a home," Schweizer said. "As if Dickens had just stepped out."

The museum does not skip over the darker periods of Dickens' life.

On the top floor, the former servants' quarters hold a set of bars from Marshalsea prison, where Dickens' father was imprisoned for his debts, and jars from the boot-polish factory where 12-year-old Charles was sent to work.

The experience of financial insecurity marked Dickens for life, and drove his workaholic quest for success. He wrote more than 20 books, had 10 children, traveled the world on lecture tours and campaigned for social change until his death from a stroke in 1870 at the age of 58.

The museum's directors have been criticized for shutting the facility during most of the bicentenary of Dickens' birth— and during the tourism bonanza that accompanied the London Olympics.

It reopens Monday, just in time for a Dickensian Christmas, complete with readings, performances of "A Christmas Carol," mulled wine and mince pies.

The museum hopes to draw 45,000 visitors a year, a 50 percent rise on pre-refurbishment levels. Schweizer thinks Dickens' future has never been rosier.

"There has always been interest. I think the bicentenary has taken it to a whole new level," Schweizer said. "There is a great hunger of Dickens, especially in these times" of economic austerity and uncertainty.

As evidence, he held up a London newspaper proclaiming news of the Duchess of Cambridge's pregnancy under the headline "Kate Expectations."

"People still get all the references," he said.

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When the World Was ‘Mad About Brubeck’: Dave Brubeck, 1920-2012

Dave Brubeck—recently called "the reigning elder statesman of jazz" by the Washington Post—died Wednesday in Connecticut on his way to a cardiology appointment, one day shy of his 92^nd birthday. But he'll really outlast the apocalypse. Donald Fagen assured us so, in his classic song "New Frontier," where the Steely Dan singer, projecting himself back to the bop-crazed 1950s, sounded positively giddy about surviving a nuclear disaster in a fallout shelter. The end of the world as we knew it would feel fine, as long as a guy had his girl—and the jazzman—to weather the ultimate storm:

"I hear you're mad about Brubeck/
I like your eyes, I like him too/
He's an artist, a pioneer
/We've got to have some music on the new frontier..."

Brubeck's Time coverTalk about pioneering: Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, as only the second jazz figure to earn such a pop-culture honor. The first had been Louis Armstrong, but the fact that Brubeck was able to do it without also being a vocalist or even a particularly outsized personality (although Time called him "a wigging cat with a far-out wail") spoke volumes about the revolution he was helping engineer. No longer was jazz just bar music; with Brubeck at the modest spiritual helm of the "cool jazz" phenomenon, it would be the stuff of highbrow suburban living rooms and classical concert halls… and boyhood beatnik fantasies, too.
Some of his highest honors came five decades or more after the Time magazine cover, like the Kennedy Center honor he received from President Obama in 2009—coincidentally, on his 89^th birthday. He'd been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts in 1994, followed by lifetime achievement awards from the Grammys and the National Endowment for the Arts.
But maybe the most telling honor for the pianist/bandleader was this: His 1959 album Time Out, after rising to No. 2 on the charts, became the first jazz long-player to sell a million copies.
That was thanks to "Take Five"—composed by Dave Brubeck Quartet member Paul Desmond—which achieved a rare, if not downright oxymoronic, success: "hit jazz single." Never mind that it was in 5/4 time: The instrumental was, from its first piano riff to Desmond's eventual alto saxophone "lead vocal," an undeniable smash. "Take Five" reached No. 25 on the pop charts in America and crossed over to the top 10 on the easy listening charts; in Britain, it went to No. 6. The tune eventually became the theme of NBC's Today show in the mid-'60s, as well as a future staple of commercials and movies.
Brubeck experienced heart failure on his way to a cardiology appointment Wednesday morning with his son Darius, announced Russell Gloyd, his longtime manager, producer, and conductor. Though Brubeck had his share of health problems, he'd been doing around 50 shows a year as recently as 2010, and about 80 a year circa 2008.
Darius, also a pianist, will perform Thursday night at a tribute concert in Waterbury, Connecticut—a show that will go on despite its change in status from the originally intended birthday celebration.
The son of a rancher, Brubeck was born in Concord, California on Dec. 6, 1920 and intended to ranch the homestead after college. But by the time he entered the Army in 1942, he was devoting himself to the piano instead, and he served as a musician in Patton's army, playing in the military's only racially integrated band. "There's not a day goes by when I don't think about what I saw then," he said in 1998. "When I got back home I began to play a much more aggressive, dissonant form of jazz"—a style that eventually turned back to the melodiousness a nation came to know and love, after some post-war decamping.
His mother, a classically trained piano teacher, initially disapproved of her son's interest in seemingly low-brow jazz, though she came to appreciate the error of her ways. It certainly didn't hurt, in her eyes, that he went on to compose and adapt music for operas and ballet, as jazz's image shifted to the stuff of high art. "Blue Rondo a la Turk," the opening track on Time Out and a jazz standard in its own right, even subtly riffed on Mozart. "That's the beauty of music," Brubeck told the Associated Press. "You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz."
His recording career began at Fantasy Records in the late '40s, and it was the Dave Brubeck Quartet's first album as a combo, Jazz at Oberlin in 1953 that proved to be his real breakout. At that time, the Quartet was largely touring college campuses, helping give jazz an academic image well removed from its prior perception as strictly nightclub music. He moved on to even greater success after switching to the Columbia label the following year and issued bestsellers like Time Further Out (another top 10 seller) and a mid-'60s greatest-hits set.
His predilection for unusual time signatures didn't stand in the way of what could nearly be qualified as pop success. His key recordings were as much about the song as the performance or improvisation, which made his albums easily digestible for mass audiences, even if "Blue Rondo a la Turk" was in 9/8.
Brubeck felt bashful about being on the cover of Time. "I wanted Duke Ellington to have the cover before me," he told the London Independent in 1998. "We were on tour together in Denver, Colorado and there was a knock on the door at 7am. It was Duke and he was holding a copy of Time. 'Look!' he said. 'You're on the cover.' He was genuinely pleased for me, even though it should have been him. He had been the first person to get me a job in New York and later he insisted that I become a fellow at Yale."
Brubeck picked up the nickname "the Ambassador of Cool." And he really did have the resume and visa stamps of a designated cultural statesman. ""There is no American alive who has done more extensive and effective cultural diplomacy than Dave Brubeck," Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, told the Washington Post in 2008—on the eve of then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice betstowing upon him the inaugural Benjamin Franklin Award, "for civilian service to international cooperation." "Dave is not only one of the greatest living American artists," said Gioia, "he's also one of the greatest living American diplomats."
Brubeck played for President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow during a series of summit meetings in 1988. The tension was noticeably loosened up by Brubeck's set, and his manager liked to half-jokingly credit him for helping end the Cold War. ""The next day," Gloyd told the Post, "[Secretary of State] George Shultz broke through the ranks, gave Dave a big hug and said, 'Dave, you made the summit. No one was talking after three days. You made the breakthrough.' "
There was a knock against Brubeck: that "throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Dave Brubeck Quartet was the acceptable face of jazz for America's white middle classes," as the Independent put it. "Some people still haven't forgiven him for it." But holdouts on the real jazz scene were few and far between. "Generally, the guys who were on the cutting edge liked me," Brubeck told the paper. "Mingus, Parker, Kenton, Benny Carter, Miles Davis, Ellington; they were always very favourable. Cecil Taylor said I filled a gap, but he didn't say between what and what."
Fagen has said that the first jazz LP he ever bought was "probably the first jazz record a lot of people got, a Dave Brubeck record, Dave Brubeck at Newport, 1958—a great album, which I still have."
The Steely Dan frontman was far from the only celebrity mega-fan. In honor of Brubeck's 90^th birthday, Clint Eastwood produced a documentary, Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way, broadcast on TCM in December 2010, featuring narration by Alec Baldwin and testimonials by figures from Sting to George Lucas. ""Clint has always had a particular fondness for Dave because they both come from Northern California," the director, Bruce Ricker, told Jazz Times. "And Dave was one of the people that Clint used to listen to all the time. I figured we could profile Dave through Clint's eyes as a storyteller and make Clint Johnny Appleseed or something."
The 90th birthday celebration two years ago resulted in a round of reappraisals and reissues, including the release of two more best-ofs, Sony Legacy's 21-track double CD Dave Brubeck: Legacy of a Legend (which could boast of song selection by Brubeck himself, and liner notes by Darius) and Concord Music's The Definitive Dave Brubeck on Fantasy, Concord Jazz and Telarc (with songs selected by Gloyd, Brubeck's manager/conductor ).
The documentary included footage from an interview Brubeck with the BBC in 1989, "dealing with this religious stuff," said Ricker, "when he starts talking about going to heaven and who's going to be there from jazz."
If there is a jazz heaven, as the saying goes, you know they've got one hell of a band... and they're surely vamping in 5/8 as we speak.

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What the devil? Royal Opera stages Meyerbeer rarity

LONDON (Reuters) - The audience at London's Royal Opera House is in for a big surprise on Thursday night.

They will witness German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer's 1831 grand opera "Robert le Diable" (Robert the Devil), a work so rarely performed that virtually no one has seen it, let alone sung it or played it.

In fact, the last time Britain's prestigious Royal Opera House put on the epic work was in 1890, by which time it had fallen out of favor, never to recover fully.

"I think the piece still works today," said Laurent Pelly, the French director with the Herculean task of staging a work that turned Meyerbeer into a superstar when it premiered in Paris nearly two centuries ago.

"I hope they will be taken by the story and the music and the singers," he told Reuters backstage on the eve of opening night. "It's a huge piece."

The chorus is 80-strong, there are 10 dancers, and the principal singers face roles among the most demanding in opera.

Adding to the stress was a last-minute casting change for the key role of Isabelle, which was to have been performed by American soprano Jennifer Rowley in her Royal Opera debut until she was replaced less than a week before the premiere.

"It was a musical problem," Pelly explained. "We were doing five weeks and in the end it was not possible to do, so it was very important to find somebody else," he added, speaking in English.

Italian Patrizia Ciofi was brought in with the advantage that she had worked with Pelly before and, crucially, was one of the few sopranos who had previously performed Robert le Diable.

"Three days is very short of course, but I know Patrizia," Pelly said.

Ciofi will sing the first four performances (December 6, 9, 12 and 15) and Russian soprano Sofia Fomina will take over for the final two shows on December 18 and 21.

PARIS TRIUMPH

When Meyerbeer started work on Robert le Diable, he set out to create a hit. Pelly likens the opera to a Hollywood blockbuster, light on subtlety but rich in action, special effects, stirring music and melodrama.

Set in the times of knights, jousting and chivalry, the story follows Robert's quest for the hand of Isabelle and his dangerous dance with the devil, and contains the once notorious scene of nuns' ghosts dancing provocatively by their tombs.

The effect on audiences in 1831 was sensational. They fell in love with the opera, which quickly became a favorite around the world and was deemed a masterpiece by Frederic Chopin.

Degas captured it in paint and, according to Pelly, its influences can be traced to popular works by composers including Bizet, Offenbach and Gounod.

Why it had fallen from grace by the 20th century is not clear.

"During the 19th century a lot of composers were inspired by Robert le Diable and by Meyerbeer, and 60 or 70 years after it seemed very old fashioned, there were too many performances and everybody knew it," said Pelly.

"I think the opera-goer wanted to forget it."

Other factors included the expense of staging such a large work, the emerging talents of Wagner and Verdi and its running time of over four hours. Except for Sunday's matinee, there are, unusually, plenty of tickets left on the Royal Opera website.

Some experts link its decline to Wagner, who was heavily influenced by Meyerbeer early on but turned on the composer and sought to disassociate himself from him.

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Play resumes at windy Australian Open

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Play resumed in the final round of the Australian Open on Sunday after a three-hour delay forced by gale-force winds at The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney. Organizers announced the suspension of play at 11:45 a.m. local time (0045 GMT) after the 80 kilometer per hour winds resulted in balls moving on the greens and a TV tower collapsing at the 18th. "It got to 80 kilometers, which was when that tower fell over," Trevor Herden, Golf Australia director of operations, told reporters. "There is nothing we can do to protect people but to get them out of danger. We have an obligation to the public and the players. And then there is the golf course, which at that point became unplayable." Play resumed at 2:50 p.m. (0350 GMT) with the wind still high and the added complication of a rainstorm approaching the south Sydney area. John Senden and Britain's world number four Justin Rose will be the last players to take to the course in the leading group with the Australian holding a two-shot lead as he bids for a second title at his home Open. Eight-times major winner Tom Watson, already well out of contention, was an early starter and scored an impressive three-under-par 69. The American said the conditions could make the final round a lottery. "A good score is even par," he said. "It will be interesting to see what happens. It's a really strong wind. Yesterday it blew like hell." Herden said they would play as much golf as possible on Sunday but a Monday finish could not be ruled out. "The leader is nearly off," he added. "We would want to finish this championship and if it means tomorrow morning, then it's tomorrow morning."

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UPDATE 1-Golf-Play resumes at windy Australian Open

SYDNEY, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Play resumed in the final round of the Australian Open on Sunday after a three-hour delay forced by gale-force winds at The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney. Organisers announced the suspension of play at 11:45 a.m. local time (0045 GMT) after the 80 kilometre per hour winds resulted in balls moving on the greens and a TV tower collapsing at the 18th. "It got to 80 kilometres, which was when that tower fell over," Trevor Herden, Golf Australia director of operations, told reporters. "There is nothing we can do to protect people but to get them out of danger. We have an obligation to the public and the players. And then there is the golf course, which at that point became unplayable." Play resumed at 2:50 p.m. (0350 GMT) with the wind still high and the added complication of a rainstorm approaching the south Sydney area. John Senden and Britain's world number four Justin Rose will be the last players to take to the course in the leading group with the Australian holding a two-shot lead as he bids for a second title at his home Open. Eight-times major winner Tom Watson, already well out of contention, was an early starter and scored an impressive three-under-par 69. The American said the conditions could make the final round a lottery. "A good score is even par," he said. "It will be interesting to see what happens. It's a really strong wind. Yesterday it blew like hell." Herden said they would play as much golf as possible on Sunday but a Monday finish could not be ruled out.

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Cricket-New Zealand coach Hesson's advice 'laughable' - Taylor

WELLINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Disgruntled former captain Ross Taylor has slammed New Zealand's team management, dismissing head coach Mike Hesson's advice as "laughable" and claiming he was not given enough support in his 18-month stint as skipper. Taylor was stripped of the Twenty20 and one-day captaincy last week on Hesson's recommendation, and rejected an offer to stay on as test skipper in the wake of New Zealand's drawn test series away to Sri Lanka. Opener Brendon McCullum will take on all three roles and faces a baptism of fire as he leads New Zealand on tour to South Africa later this month. "I knew it'd be tough from the outset (with Hesson)," Taylor said in comments published on the New Zealand Herald's website (www.nzherald.co.nz) on Sunday. "I gave him as much support as I could but it wasn't reciprocated. "We liaised during the Champions League," added the 28-year-old, who played with the Delhi Daredevils at the T20 tournament in South Africa in October. "He wrote down a few things for me to improve on, which were laughable, frankly." Hesson, a career coach with no experience as a player at senior level, was appointed in July. A former coach of New Zealand A sides and provincial side Otago, he also had a short stint as assistant coach to John Bracewell at English county side Gloucester and was head coach of Kenya last year. Taylor, New Zealand's top test batsman, has opted out of the tour to South Africa in a blow for the tourists' hopes of upsetting the number one-ranked test nation in their two-match series. He has flagged a return to the team in time for their three-test home series against England in March, but said he still felt "raw" after his demotion. "I knew I had areas to work on, like in communication, but I didn't get much support," he said of his captaincy, during which New Zealand struggled in all three formats of the game. "Instead, I organised a number of things myself, like chatting to (psychologist) Gilbert Enoka. I thought that indicated I was trying to be a better captain. "I'm more disappointed in the process to be told four days before the test series began (in Sri Lanka) that they didn't want me as captain. "I also wasn't consulted in the tour review process by (New Zealand Cricket chairman Chris) Moller or (NZC chief executive David) White. No one got hold of me."

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Golf-Wind stops play at Australian Open

SYDNEY, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Play was suspended during the final round of the Australian Open on Sunday when high winds resulted in balls moving on the greens at The Lakes Golf Club. Organisers announced the suspension at 11:45 a.m. local time (0045 GMT), some 35 minutes before the leading group were scheduled to tee off. John Senden and Britain's world number four Justin Rose will be the last players to take to the course with the Australian holding a two-shot lead as he bids for a second title at his home Open. Eight-times major winner Tom Watson, already well out of contention, was an early starter and scored an impressive three-under-par 69. The American said the conditions could make the final round a lottery.

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UK hospital protests to Australian radio over hoax

LONDON (AP) — The British hospital that fell victim to a prank call from two Australian DJs asking questions about the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge condemned the hoax on Saturday, ratcheting up the pressure on their radio station a day after the nurse who took the call was found dead. Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital, wrote the chairman of the radio station's owner to urge him not to let such a thing happen again. The consequence of the prank for "was the humiliation of two dedicated and caring nurses who were simply doing their job tending to their patients," he wrote. "The longer term consequence has been reported around the world and is, frankly, tragic beyond words." Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found dead early Friday at nurses' housing provided by London's King Edward VII hospital, where Prince William's wife, the former Kate Middleton, was being treated for acute morning sickness this week. Police released a grainy photo of Saldanha on Saturday. A native of India, she had lived in Bristol in southwestern England with her family for the past nine years, Scotland Yard confirmed. Police said her death is being treated as "unexplained," though they said they didn't find anything suspicious. A coroner will make a determination on the cause next week. Police have made no connection between her death and the prank call, but people from London to Sydney have been making the assumption that she died because of stress from the call. Flowers were left outside the hospital's nurses' building. Attached to the red, white and blue flowers, a note read: "Dear Jacintha, our thoughts are with you and your family. From all your fellow nurses, we bless your soul. God bless." A man identified as Saldanha's driving instructor Jeff Sellick, told Sky News he was in "complete shock" at her death, saying "it's just such a shame, she was such a nice person." In a statement, Saldanha's family said they were "deeply saddened" by the death and asked for privacy. Saldanha had worked for four years at the hospital. She took the hoax call Tuesday by the two DJs from 2DayFM, and transferred the call to the nurse caring for the duchess. During the call, a woman using the often-mimicked voice of Britain's monarch asked about the duchess' health. She was told by the second nurse who took the call from Saldanha that the duchess, the former Kate Middleton, "hasn't had any retching with me and she's been sleeping on and off." The recorded conversation sparked international headlines, and the DJs, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, soon apologized for the prank. They have said they will not return to the station until further notice, though the chief executive of the station's parent company has said he stands behind them. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, which regulates radio broadcasting, says it has received complaints about the prank and is discussing the matter with the Sydney-based station, though it has not yet begun an investigation. The station has a history of controversy, including a series of "Heartless Hotline" shows in which disadvantage people were offered a prize that could be taken away from them by listeners. St. James's Palace, the office of the duchess and her husband Prince William, expressed sadness at Saldanha's death, but insisted that it had not complained about the hoax. King Edward VII's Hospital said it did not reprimand Saldanha, nor had plans to discipline her. Officials from St. James's Palace have said the duchess is not yet 12 weeks pregnant. The child would be the first for her and William

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