Salvatore Licitra, a tenor known in his Italian homeland as the "new Pavarotti" for his potent voice and considerable stamina, died Monday at age 43 after spending nine days in a coma following a motorscooter accident in Sicily.

Catania's Garibaldi Hospital, announcing the death, said Licitra never regained consciousness after suffering severe head and chest injuries in the Aug. 27 accident. Doctors had said Licitra crashed his scooter into a wall near the town of Ragusa, apparently after suffering an interruption of blood to the brain while driving.

He may be 87, but don't suggest to French crooner and veritable national monument Charles Aznavour that his forthcoming tour is a goodbye. "I have never, ever used the word farewell," he quickly points out.

The legendary singer-songwriter pleased fans the world over when he announced plans for a month-long residency at Paris' landmark Olympia theatre starting September 7, followed by a nationwide tour.

World champion soprano Pretty Yende never knew opera existed until a soaring score of an airline commercial came over the television in her South African black township home 10 years ago.

The flash of 19th-century French composer Leo Delibes' classic "Flower Duet" from his opera "Lakme" so moved the teenager growing up without librettas and arias that she asked a high school teacher the next day what the music was.

For British director Steve McQueen, there was no better place than Manhattan to film "Shame," his new film that portrays the life of a 30-something sex addict, played by Michael Fassbender in often graphic detail.

"Excess and access. New York is the place," McQueen said Sunday ahead of his second film's world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Al Pacino's movie "Wilde Salome" is a complicated examination of Oscar Wilde's once-forbidden play about illicit love and revenge.

But his inspiration was simple: Jessica Chastain.

From the red carpet to the big screen, women are dazzling at this year's Venice Film Festival with the key roles going to female stars who amaze with glamour and sheer chutzpah.

Pop diva Madonna crazed the island when she sauntered down the celebrity runway in a striking Vionnet dress with red butterfly motif and long sweeping train -- matched with large red-rimmed sunglasses and a dynamite red lipstick.

Hollywood filmmakers are joining forces with Chinese companies to gain a foothold in the Asian nation's huge movie market -- but obstacles remain in the form of commercial restrictions and censorship.

China is by far the world's fastest-growing cinema market and, despite official barriers to entry and limits on artistic freedom, the world's second-largest economy is proving a huge draw for foreign filmmakers.

Messages of good health and positive self-esteem for girls are not hard to come by in kid lit, so what's the deal with all the attention for a not-yet-published rhyming picture book about an obese, unhappy 14-year-old named Maggie?

The title, for starters: "Maggie Goes on a Diet."

For many people, the images of commercial airliners hitting the Twin Towers, and of Manhattan engulfed in a huge dust cloud as they collapsed, looked like a Hollywood apocalypse-style movie.

But despite that -- or maybe in part because of it -- 9/11 has not generated as large a number of movies as previous epochal events such as World War II or Vietnam.

When Chaz Bono takes to the floor on American television's "Dancing with the Stars" later this month, he won't be lacking for fans -- or detractors.

The 42-year-old LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) activist formerly known as Chastity Bono is the first transgender contestant on the U.S. version of the globally popular reality television series.