Elton John has revealed that he’s physically unable to see the new musical for which he wrote the music, saying that he has lost the majority of his eyesight after suffering an eye infection.
The singer-songwriter attended the opening night of The Devil Wears Prada in London on Sunday.
“I haven’t been able to come to many of the previews because, as you know, I have lost my eyesight. So it’s hard for me to see it. But I love to hear it and boy it sounded good tonight,” he told the audience from the stage, while thanking his husband David Furnish, “who has been my rock.”
In September, John revealed that a severe eye infection he contracted in France over the summer had left him with “only limited vision” in one eye and totally without eyesight in the other.
“I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye,” he wrote in an Instagram post at the time.
“I am so grateful for the excellent team of doctors and nurses and my family, who have taken such good care of me over the last several weeks.”
Speaking to ABC News last week about the new Disney+ documentary Elton John: Never Too Late, he was asked about the status of a potential new album.
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“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything, and I just have to get off my backside. Unfortunately, I lost my eyesight in my right eye in July because I had an infection in the south of France, and it’s been four months now since I haven’t been able to see. And my left eye’s not the greatest. So there’s hope and encouragement, and it will be OK, but I’m kind of stuck at the moment,” he told Robin Roberts.
“Because I can do something like this [interview], but going into the studio and recording, I don’t know because I can’t see a lyric, for a start. We’re taking initiative to try and get it better, but at the moment, that’s really what we’re concentrating on. It’s never fortunate for anything like this to happen, and it kind of floored me. I can’t see anything. I can’t read anything. I can’t watch anything.
John wrote the score for the stage musical version of The Devil Wears Prada, based on the 2006 movie about a young journalist navigating the glamour and egos of a glossy fashion magazine.
The production at London’s Dominion Theatre stars Vanessa Williams as the fearsome editor Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep in the film.
Sunday’s gala, a fundraiser for the Elton John AIDS Foundation, was attended by celebrities and fashion-industry figures including designer Donatella Versace and former Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the rumored inspiration for the Priestly character.
Wintour described the musical as “entertaining,” and told the BBC that “it’s for the audience and for the people I work with to decide if there are any similarities between me and Miranda Priestly.”
— with files from The Associated Press
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