Last night the programme for the Royal Opera's current production of Fidelio included a special tribute to that most characterful of tenors, Robert Tear, who died this week at the age of 72. Only once did I have the immense pleasure of spending time in the company of this warm and witty man in a Radio 3 book-review programme, which was funny and easy thanks to his interesting, and interested, conversation. He was, though, a constant presence in my life through his wonderfully interactive response to the performance around him when sitting on a concert platform and the number of precisely observed roles, later cameos, he took on at Covent Garden, English National Opera and Glyndebourne. Few knew him better than his equally distinguished colleague Sir Thomas Allen, whose reminiscence as printed last night the Royal Opera gives us kind permission to reproduce here.

By the time she was created a Dame – on the same day as Julie Andrews in 2000 - Elizabeth Taylor’s significance to the film industry had long since passed. She died today at the age of 79. For years she has been of interest to the headline writers only as the wife of Larry Fortensky, the seventh man to put a ring on her finger (Burton famously did it twice) and her intriguing and possibly co-dependent friendship with her fellow child star Michael Jackson. But let us remember on this day, that at least where actresses are concerned, she stands proud as this country’s most glamorous export to Hollywood.

By the time she was created a Dame – on the same day as Julie Andrews in 2000 - Elizabeth Taylor’s significance to the film industry had long since passed. She died today at the age of 79. For years she has been of interest to the headline writers only as the wife of Larry Fortensky, the seventh man to put a ring on her finger (Burton famously did it twice) and her intriguing and possibly co-dependent friendship with her fellow child star Michael Jackson. But let us remember on this day that, at least where actresses are concerned, she stands proud as this country’s most glamorous export to Hollywood.

Jet Harris was one of the architects of British rock'n'roll. His death rams home just how distant that era now seems. A former skiffler, he joined The Shadows after a spell backing Terry Dene, British rock's first bad boy. In time, Harris became a bad boy too, setting the template for the self-destructive lifestyle that would become a cliché. But his moody image will survive too. His rumbling bass guitar will forever be synonymous with those evocative Shadows' hits.

The beautiful voice is no more. I know the tag has been applied recently to Renée Fleming, but for liquid-gold soprano sound, there has never been anyone to surpass Dame Margaret Price, who died yesterday in her native Wales three months short of her 70th birthday. Few singers have covered a wider range with such poise and style; in the April 2007 edition of the BBC Music Magazine we placed her Number Eight among the Top 20 Greatest Sopranos of All Time (I now recall she was Number Three on my own list, after Callas and Sutherland, of course).

The beautiful voice is no more. I know the tag has been applied recently to Renée Fleming, but for liquid-gold soprano sound, there has never been anyone to surpass Dame Margaret Price, who died yesterday in her native Wales three months short of her 70th birthday. Few singers have covered a wider range with such poise and style; in the April 2007 edition of the BBC Music Magazine we placed her Number Eight among the Top 20 Greatest Sopranos of All Time (I now recall she was Number Three on my own list, after Callas and Sutherland, of course).

The death of Don Kirshner on 17 January at age 76 is a reminder that although the age of the New York-based song factory seems to be long gone, pop is still about the backroom. Where would Lady Gaga be without a producer/songwriter like Red One? What Kirshner established with his music publishing company Aldon went way beyond getting songs to the performers. He set a template that still resonates through pop.

I'm absolutely horrified to hear of the death this morning from pneumonia, following a swine-flu infection, of Trish Keenan of the band Broadcast. I had only ever spoken to her on the telephone, but many friends knew her well and she was one of those rare people in music who was universally liked and admired by all who met her. Far more than just a singer and frontwoman, Keenan, 42, was a visionary artist: from their beginnings in the Birmingham alternative scene, she and her partner James Cargill, who always formed the core of the band, always blended art and life, and created a beautiful totality of sound, vision and mythos which made them stand utterly apart from all their contempories - although they were renowned for the support and creative encouragement they gave to all those around them.

"The way I keep in touch with the world… is very gingerly… because the world touches too hard." That honest and hugely poignant statement by the musician, composer, songwriter, painter and full-on eccentric Captain Beefheart comes from a documentary film by Anton Corbijn titled Don van Vliet: Some Yo Yo Stuff (1994). His staccato delivery is a clue to the terrible toll of sharing his life for decades with multiple sclerosis, but it also feels like a comment on those who just didn’t "get" his music, his performances and his shimmeringly surreal conversations.

Joan Sutherland’s was the voice of my childhood, the voice on the record-player when my mother, a coloratura soprano, practised her Lucia and Traviata. It was a clear and ravishingly carefree sound, as fluid as a stream bubbling in sunlight, effortlessly scintillating in the highest registers, a voice that almost sounded regretful as it descended to earth.

Tony Curtis, who has died in Las Vegas at the age of 85, made an improbable leap from Bronx street kid - the erstwhile Bernie Schwarz, who was always getting beaten up - to Hollywood icon in the 1950s and early Sixties. That he was able to do so is a testament to his determination to be an actor on the G I Bill, Universal’s willingness to put raw hunks of beef like him and Rock Hudson (a fellow Navy man) under contract, and Bernie’s own belief in his facile charm.