2010 deaths

Vance Nye Bourjaily (September 17, 1922 – August 31, 2010) was an American novelist, playwright, journalist, creative writing teacher, and essayist.

Ernest Blanc (November 1, 1923 – December 22, 2010) was a French opera singer, one of the leading baritones of his era in France.
Born in Sanary-sur-Mer, Ernest Blanc studied at the Music Conservatory of Toulon with Sabran, from 1946 to 1949. He made his debut in Marseille, as Tonio, in 1950. He then sang throughout France in the French and Italian repertories.
In 1954, he made his debut at the Palais Garnier in Paris, as Rigoletto, he sang there as first baritone for 25 years in a wide repertoire (Rameau, Mozart, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Verdi, Puccini, etc.). He also appeared often at the Opéra-Comique, and was a regular guest at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
His career took an international turn in 1958, with debut at the Bayreuth Festival, followed by debuts at La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in London, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Monte Carlo Opera, the Teatro Nacional Sao Carlos in Lisbon, the Liceo in Barcelona, the Berlin State Opera, etc.
He also enjoyed considerable success in America, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, etc.
Notable roles included; Don Giovanni, Valentin, Zurga, Escamillo, Golaud, Germont, Renato, Amonasro, Scarpia, Riccardo in I puritani, opposite Joan Sutherland, Alfonso in La favorite, Wolfram, Telramund, etc.
A stylish singer and a fine musician, he possessed a beautiful voice with a brilliant upper register and impeccable diction, one of the few post war French singers to have enjoyed a truly international career. After his retirement he taught in Paris.

Fred J. Ascani (born Alfredo John Ascani; May 29, 1917 – March 28, 2010) was an American major general and test pilot of the United States Air Force. He was one of the "Men of Mach 1" and was considered the father of systems engineering at Wright Field.

James Elmer Akins (October 15, 1926 – July 15, 2010) was the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from September, 1973 to February, 1976, just in time to serve during the 1973 Oil Crisis of October, 1973 to March, 1974. Akins was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and on the advisory council of the Iran Policy Committee (IPC). Akins has been involved with the pro-Palestine organization If Americans Knew.

Richard Burton Cronin (August 30, 1974 – September 8, 2010) was an American singer, songwriter and rapper, best known for being the lead singer and primary songwriter for the pop and hip hop group LFO.

Thomas Kelman Fleming, FRSAMD (29 June 1927 – 18 April 2010) was a Scottish actor, director, and poet, and a television and radio commentator for the BBC.

Philippe Séguin (21 April 1943 – 7 January 2010) was a French political figure who was President of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1997 and President of the Cour des Comptes of France from 2004 to 2010.
He entered the Court of Financial Auditors in 1970, but he began a political career in the Neo-Gaullist party RPR. In 1978, he was elected to the National Assembly as a deputy for the Vosges département. He was Mayor of Épinal between 1983 and 1997.
Representing the social tradition of the Gaullism, he was Minister of Social Affairs in Jacques Chirac's cabinet, from 1986 to 1988.
After Chirac's defeat at the 1988 presidential election, he allied with Charles Pasqua and criticized the abandonment of Gaullist doctrine by the RPR executive. He accused Alain Juppé and Édouard Balladur of wanting an alignment on liberal and pro-European policies.
In 1992, he played a leading role in the No campaign against the Maastricht Treaty. On the eve of the vote he opposed President François Mitterrand in a televised debate.
As president of the National Assembly from 1993 to 1997, he supported the winning candidacy of Jacques Chirac at the 1995 presidential election. He inspired the theme of Chirac's campaign which was named "the social fracture".
Their relations deteriorated when he took the lead of the RPR, after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 legislative election. He failed to change the name of the party to "The Rally". He criticized the ascendancy of President Chirac within the party, refusing to be the leader of a "Chirac's fan-club". He resigned in 1999 just before the European elections, leaving his deputy Nicolas Sarkozy in charge.
As the RPR's official candidate, he lost the 2001 mayoral election in Paris. Refusing the merger of the Neo-Gaullist party with the right-wing classical forces in the Union for a Popular Movement, he quit politics in 2002.
He died at the age of 66 on 7 January 2010 from a heart attack.

André Lamy (19 July 1932 – 2 May 2010) was a Canadian film producer, who served as Canada's Government Film Commissioner from 1975 until 1979. In this position he was the Chairman of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
Lamy was born in Montreal, Quebec, and studied at two universities; the Université de Montréal and McGill University.During the 1960s he worked as a producer for the Montreal-based company Niagara Films, and then later with Onyx Films, a company which was owned by his brother, Pierre Lamy. In this period he worked on several important films, including Claude Fournier's Deux femmes en or. Released in 1970, this held the record for the most profitable film made in Quebec for the following sixteen years.In 1970 Lamy was recruited to become the Assistant Film Commissioner of the NFB, making him Sydney Newman's deputy in the running of the organisation. As Newman spoke only English, Lamy took a leading role in the NFB's French language output; Québécois filmmakers dealt almost entirely with him. It was in this capacity that Lamy drew Newman's attention to potential problems with several politically sensitive French Canadian productions made around the time of the October Crisis, including Denys Arcand's On est au coton, which Newman banned from distribution. When Lamy succeeded Newman as Government Film Commissioner in 1975 he authorised the release of several of these same productions, feeling that enough time had elapsed since the October Crisis for their distribution to be a less sensitive matter.Lamy left his position at the NFB in January 1979. In 1980 he became the head of the Canadian Film Development Commission, and in 1984 he was responsible for renaming this organisation as "Telefilm Canada", to reflect the fact that it also invested in television as well as film productions.He was also the executive producer on The Little Flying Bears and Sharky & George for CinéGroupe.
In 1992 he was one of the producers of the controversial documentary series The Valour and the Horror, a co-production of the NFB and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The series was criticised by some veterans of World War II for its accusations of unprosecuted war crimes committed by Canadian troops. Reaction to the series was so severe that one of Lamy's successors as Commissioner of the NFB, Joan Pennefather, was forced to appear before the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans' Affairs to defend the programmes.An announcement was made on 5 May 2010 that Lamy had died over the previous weekend, 1 or 2 May. James Moore, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, was quoted as saying "Lamy's dedication to the NFB and his passion for film serve as reminders of his important contribution to our country's cultural landscape."

Giulietta Simionato (born Giulia Simionato; Forlì, Romagna, 12 May 1910 – Rome, 5 May 2010) was an Italian mezzo-soprano. Her career spanned the period from the 1930s until her retirement in 1966.

Michele Giordano (26 September 1930 – 2 December 2010) was an Italian Roman Catholic prelate, who was the Archbishop of Naples and a cardinal-priest.