It seemed he would go on forever- he didn’t look his 92 years. Remarkably, he suffered from stage fright throughout his entire life, often unable to eat on the day of a performance due to anxiety and aggravated by relentless self-criticism. It’s noteworthy that he survived the stress of this.
Two of his live performances stick in my imagination- his 1998 Royal Opera Don Carlos with an all star cast: Thomas Hampton, Karina Matilla, Violeta Urmana and Feruccio Furlanetto as Philip II. The second was accompanying Andreas Schaffer in a Beethoven concerto where the atmosphere was incredibly frosty between them. They wouldn’t look at each other at the end and I was surprised to learn later that they were very close friends.
RIP