Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride (also known as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride) is a 2005 British-American stop-motion animated musical dark comedy film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton with a screenplay by John August, Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler based on characters created by Burton and Carlos Grangel. The plot is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp leads the cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter voices Emily, the titular bride. "Corpse Bride" is the third stop-motion feature film produced by Burton and the first directed by him (the previous two films, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach", were directed by Henry Selick). This is also the first stop-motion feature from Burton that was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was dedicated to executive producer Joe Ranft, who died in a car accident during production.
Régine Crespin
She appeared as Tosca in Geneva in 1962. In 1966 she sang Ariadne at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and that same year made her first appearance at the San Francisco Opera singing both Cassandre and Didon in Berlioz's "Les Troyens". She returned to the San Francisco Opera numerous times, singing such roles as Elisabeth in "Tannhäuser" (1966), the Marschallin (1967), Sieglinde (1968), Tosca (1970), Santuzza (1976), Mme de Croissy (1982), the title role in Offenbach's "La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein" (1983), Madame Flora (1986), and the Countess in Tchaikovsky's "The Queen of Spades" (1987). In 1963 she made her debut with the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company portraying Sieglinde, a role which she repeated there in 1965. She later sang with the Opera Company of Philadelphia as Carmen (1978), the Countess (1983), and Madame Flora (1986). Under Karajan, in 1967 Crespin portrayed Brünnhilde in Wagner's "Die Walküre" for her first appearance at the Salzburg Festival. She also returned to the Opéra National de Paris a handful of times during her career, notably singing the title role in Fauré's "Pénélope". Her last opera performance was at the Paris Opéra in 1989 singing the Countess in "The Queen of Spades".
In 1970, after almost twenty years of faultless reviews, Crespin began experiencing some vocal challenges which caused her to re-evaluate her career. This coincided with the end of her marriage to Lou Bruder to whom she had been married for eleven years; the couple had no children. She also had illnesses and personal issues, all of which brought her to contemplate suicide.