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Manager represented top performing artists

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Times Staff Writer

Publicist and artists manager Edgar Vincent, who represented tenor Placido Domingo, soprano Beverly Sills and dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov amid a host of A-list singers, conductors and instrumentalists, died Thursday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. He was 90.

Vincent died of a blood clot while recovering from hip replacement surgery, according to his longtime professional partner, Patrick Farrell.

“There are no words to express the personal loss I feel, nor the professional loss to the world of opera,” Domingo, the general director of the Los Angeles Opera, said in a statement. “I knew Edgar Vincent from the beginning of my career in the U.S., and his impact on my life cannot be measured. In fact, I know of no one who was not touched by Edgar’s dignity and humanity through the world of music. We will not see the likes of Edgar again.”

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Vincent’s clients also included composer William Bolcom; conductors Erich Leinsdorf, Kent Nagano, Julius Rudel, Sir Georg Solti, Leopold Stokowski and George Szell; cellist Mstislav Rostropovich; and opera director Sarah Caldwell.

Other opera stars he represented included sopranos Eileen Farrell, Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo; mezzo-sopranos Cecilia Bartoli, Frederica von Stade and Rise Stevens; tenors Jussi Bjoerling and Salvatore Licitra; and basses Ezio Pinza, Samuel Ramey and Cesare Siepi.

Vincent was born Edgar Vincent Julius Raffaelle Simone Pos on March 13, 1918, in Hamburg, Germany, and was raised in Holland. He pursued an acting career in Hollywood, but his heavy accent proved an obstacle to obtaining major film roles.

He changed careers in the 1940s when he began working for publicist Muriel Francis and later took over her firm. His first client was Pinza, whom he met when the famed opera singer was rehearsing for “South Pacific.”

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chris.pasles@latimes.com

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