Tenor Sings During Brain Surgery
Who says tenors are temperamental? This one seems agreeable enough. The Slovenian tenor Ambroz Bajec-Lapajne was diagnosed last year with an aggressive malignant brain tumor immediately required surgery. But it wasn’t a conventional brain surgery: Doctors at the University Medical Center Utrecht kept the singer conscious under local anesthetic and asked him to perform. Recently, Bajec-Lapajne posted a video to YouTube of the operation. Joined by a pianist in the operating room, the tenor delivers the first and last couplets of Schubert’s “Gute Nacht” (in major and minor) so doctors could monitor his ability to sing and recognize key changes. In the most dramatic moment of the video (at about the 2:40 mark), Bajec-Lapajne stops singing and appears to be drifting away, but he was able to restart his song from the beginning after a short break.
