Air France tragedy deals a blow to the arts

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While French and Brazilian pilots continue to search the Atlantic for the remains of missing Air France Flight 447, Brazilian and European newspapers have been publishing names of the presumed dead among the 216 passengers who were on board. The Airbus 330, which also was carrying 12 crew members, disappeared off Brazil’s northeast coast on Sunday night, apparently after encountering violent thunderstorms and severe turbulence.

Among those feared dead is Silvio Barbato (pictured above, second from top right), artistic director of the Symphony Orchestra of the National Theatre of Brazil in the nation’s capital, Brasília, from 1989 to 1992 and from 1999 to 2006. He also conducted the Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro. He turned 50 on May 11.

Also among the plane’s passengers, according to a German newspaper, was the German architect Moritz Kock, 54. According to the newspaper, as reported in Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo, the architect had been visiting Rio de Janeiro (where the flight originated), where he met with associates of legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. According to the German newspaper, Kock had wanted the opinion of Niemayer’s team regarding the construction of an aquatic park in Potsdam, Germany, near Berlin.

Juliana Ferreira Braga de Aquino, 29, a Brazilian singer (also pictured above, second from top left), also was among the reported missing passengers.

-- Reed Johnson in Los Angeles and Cristiana Ferraz Coimbra in São Paulo