Sir Elton John has said he has been unable to watch his new musical The Devil Wears Prada because of poor vision.
The singer, 77, who wrote the score for the production, revealed in an Instagram post in September that he had lost vision in his right eye because of a severe infection contracted in July and only had limited vision in his left eye.
“I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye,” he said.
At a gala performance of The Devil Wears Prada: The Musical on Sunday, staged to raise funds for the Elton John Aids Foundation, he spoke about his health issues.
“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 said while onstage.
He also thanked his husband, David Furnish, whom he said “has been my rock”.
Last week, Sir Elton told Good Morning America that his eyesight was causing delays to a planned new album with his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin.
“I unfortunately lost my eyesight in my right eye in July because I had an infection in the South of France,” he said in the interview on 25 November. “It’s been four months now since I haven’t been able to see. My left eye is not the greatest.”
He added: “There’s hope and encouragement that it will be okay, but I’m kind of stuck in the moment because I can do something like this, but going into the studio and recording, I don’t know. Because I can’t see a lyric for start.”
Sir Elton explained that he and his doctors are “taking an initiative” to treat his eye problems, but maintained that “it’s never fortunate for anything like this to happen”.
“It kind of floored me, and I can’t see anything. I can’t read anything, I can’t watch anything,” he said.
Sir Elton’s headline set at Glastonbury in 2023 marked his last UK performance as part of his 330-date marathon Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which he drew to a close with a show in Stockholm, Sweden.
Among those who attended Sunday’s event was Anna Wintour. The Vogue editor is long rumoured to have been the inspiration behind Miranda Priestly, the steely magazine mogul in The Devil Wears Prada.
“It is for the audience and for the people I work with to decide if there are any similarities between me and Miranda Priestly,” Wintour told the BBC.
The play mirrors the film, in turn based on the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, with aspiring journalist Andy Sachs scoring a job at the prestigious Runway magazine for “fashion’s most powerful and terrifying icon”, Priestly.
As Sachs struggles to meet her boss’s demands, she finds herself “seduced by the glamourous world she once despised”, according to the promotional material.
Vanessa Williams, of Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives fame, stars as the icy editor Priestly in the stage production.
