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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-
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Verdi’s “La Traviata.” It’s a role
she has sung often — unlike
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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
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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.”
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From left: Peter W on g, H illa ry Borru d , M a teu sz Perk ow sk i