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4C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2015 PARTING SHOTS A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers Steam rises from the Hampton Lumber Mill in Warrenton Jan. 12. JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian Medals:3XI¿QLV Bulgarian soprano makes waves as stand-in already top seller at The Wine Shack Continued from Page 1C the email with the Platinum Wine Judging results. I furiously read the email. 7KHUHLWZDV3XI¿Q3LQRW*ULV won a platinum medal! I jumped up and hollered to Maryann, “Pinot gris won a platinum!” We were overjoyed at the result. How big of a deal is this? 3XI¿QZDVRQHRIRQO\WZRSLQRW gris wines to be awarded a plati- num medal. I quickly sent off an email to winemaker Ray Walsh, congratulating him for making such a delicious wine. %XWZDLWZKDWDERXW3XI¿Q Pinot Noir? In all of the excite- PHQW DERXW 3XI¿Q 3LQRW *ULV winning a platinum medal, I had forgotten that our 2010 Puf- ¿Q 3LQRW 1RLU ZDV DOVR LQ WKH competition. I was immediately disappointed that it hadn’t won a platinum medal, but I went back to the results. 7KHUH LW ZDV 3XI¿Q 3LQRW 1RLUZDVWKH¿UVWZLQHOLVWHGLQ the double gold medal section. Yes! Again, I shouted out the results to Maryann; we are so proud of our pinot noir as well. Double gold. I sent another con- gratulatory email, this time to winemaker Sean Driggers and thanked him for a job well done. Two wines submitted, two medals won. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. Those two wines that I wished good luck represented them- VHOYHV DQG WKH HQWLUH ÀRFN RI 3XI¿Q:LQHVOLNHWKHURFNVWDUV they are. 3XI¿Q LV DOUHDG\ RXU WRS seller at The Wine Shack, but since the results were released two weeks ago, these wines KDYH ÀRZQ RII WKH VKHOYHV with even greater velocity. In fact, we are now sold out of WKH 3XI¿Q 3LQRW 1RLU however we have plenty of the 3XI¿Q 3LQRW 1RLU DQG it’s even more delicious than the double gold medal win- ner. We still have some of the SODWLQXPZLQQLQJ3XI¿Q Pinot Gris on hand, but it, too, is in very short supply now — partially because Maryann pulled three cases aside to pour at our daughter’s wedding next month, and I don’t think I can get it back from her. The good news, though, is that the 2014 3XI¿Q3LQRW*ULVZLOOEHDYDLO- able in about 45 days. We are still donating a por- WLRQ RI WKH SURFHHGV RI 3XI¿Q Wine to the Friends of Haystack Rock to support the great work they do on the beach. Please remember to drink re- sponsibly. Steven and Maryann Sinkler own The Wine Shack in Cannon Beach. NEW YORK (AP) — Looking for a lyric soprano who can parachute into your production at the last minute, sing melodiously and then die movingly? At the Metropolitan Opera these days, they send out for Sonya Yoncheva. Yoncheva is in New York singing four performances as Violetta, the glamorous courte- VDQZKR¿QGVORYHWRRODWHLQ Verdi’s “La Traviata.” It’s a role she has sung often — unlike KHU¿UVWWZR0HWDVVLJQPHQWV which she had never performed onstage. She debuted in 2013 as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and this past November stepped in as Mimi in Puccini’s “La Boheme” on just a few weeks notice. “I had to learn it (the role of 0LPLLQWKHODVW¿YHGD\VEH- fore starting rehearsals here so it was really, really rushed,” the Bulgarian soprano recounted in an interview at the Met earlier this month. Yoncheva, who makes her home in Switzerland with her husband, conductor Domingo Hindoyan, had just given birth to their son, Mateo, in October. “I remember myself in the night, nursing and studying Mimi, and not sleeping, and thinking about visas, papers, my son’s passport,” she said. $ÀLJKWWR1HZ<RUNDIHZ run-throughs in the studio, and she was onstage. “When you do these kinds of things, you don’t have any time to think, so it’s better,” she said. “You don’t think about the pressure, you just go for it. AP Photo/Metropolitan Opera, Ken Howard In this Jan. 14 photo released by the Metropolitan Opera, Son- ya Yoncheva as Violetta and Francesco Demuro as Alfredo in Verdi’s “La Traviata,” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. You’re like a sportsman, you have to play the match.” Judging by the critical recep- tion, she won the match easily. Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that “aston- ishingly, this was Ms. Yonche- YD¶V¿UVWVWDJHGSHUIRUPDQFHRI the role. Her delicate, dreamy, detailed Mimi has arrived more or less fully formed.” Similar praise had greeted her debut a year earlier as Gil- da, and now in “Traviata” she has scored her biggest triumph to date. Yoncheva discounts the old cliche that Violetta requires a soprano who has “three differ- HQWYRLFHV´²KLJKÀ\LQJFRO- oratura for Act 1, a lyric line for Act 2 and a fuller, more dramat- ic sound for her death scene. “I don’t have a button here or there where you go ‘ping’ and suddenly you’re singing with a certain kind of voice,” she said, playfully poking her right cheek and then her fore- head. “But the approach is dif- ferent of course because Verdi is representing Violetta in three different little pieces of her life.” For her, Act 1 poses the greatest challenge. “Those vo- FDO¿UHZRUNVDUHYHU\GLI¿FXOW for voices like mine,” she said, “because I feel more lyric and this is absolutely coloratura.” ,QGHHG DW KHU ¿UVW SHUIRU- mance last week Yoncheva struggled a bit with the runs and high notes in her bravu- ra aria, “Sempre libera,” and omitted the often-interpolated KLJK(ÀDWDWWKHHQG²DQRWH she manages successfully on her just-released Sony album, “Paris, mon amour.” But even here she was dra- matically compelling, and she came completely into her own vocally in the later acts, earning a thunderous ovation at the end. Yoncheva’s rapid rise to fame — she’s only 33 — start- ed in her hometown of Plovdiv, where her mother, a frustrated actress who had played bit parts LQ¿OPVZDVGHWHUPLQHGWRWXUQ her daughter into some kind of artist. Sea stars: I’ve never seen so many six-rayed sea stars in my life’ Continued from Page 1C “I’ve never seen so many six- rayed sea stars in my life,” Ferber said, adding that “none of the six- rayed that we have found had any signs of disease.” Because most of the larger sea stars that eat the smaller six-rayed species died of wasting disease, Fer- ber suspects that six-rayed sea stars don’t have many natural predators. “That’s just a hypothesis,” she said. Unknowns Last summer, marine scientists PD\KDYHLGHQWL¿HGWKHYLUXVUHVSRQVL- ble for the sea stars’ dramatic die back. A disease-causing “densovirus” associated with sea stars that is “in greater abundance in diseased than in healthy sea stars” is “the most promising candidate disease agent” responsible for the mass mortality of sea stars, according to a study pub- lished in November in the journal Proceedings of the National Acade- my of Sciences. “Because scientists don’t know what causes the densovirus to kill the sea stars — and what caused this outbreak to happen — it’s kind of hard to say for sure why the smaller individuals aren’t affected as much,” Ferber said. And, since the virus was already present, the question remains: Why is the disease suddenly erupting on a much larger scale now than at any time in the past? “We just don’t know at this point,” Miner said, adding that some environmental factors may have ex- acerbated the widespread wasting. “There’s still a lot to learn.” W hile other n ew spa pers give you less, The D a ily Astoria n GIVES YOU M ORE O u r n ew C APITAL B UREAU covers the sta te for you From left: Peter W on g, H illa ry Borru d , M a teu sz Perk ow sk i