Opera singers, newly weds among Germanwings crash victims

Tributes have begun pouring in for the victims of Tuesday's crash, which claimed the lives of 150 people

Rescuers arrive close to the crash site in the French Alps
Rescuers arrive close to the crash site in the French Alps

Outside the Liceu opera house in Barcelona on Wednesday, staff members gathered at noon for two minutes of silence to honor two singers who had recently performed there.

The singers - Oleg Bryjak, a bass baritone, and Maria Radner, a contralto, who had spent about a month and a half in Barcelona rehearsing and then performing Wagner's "Siegfried" - were among the 150 people believed to have died Tuesday when a Germanwings jet en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, Germany, crashed in the French Alps.

Maria Radner was returning home with her husband and baby after the performance according to the opera house.

As the two singers were mourned in Barcelona, details about other passengers, from at least 15 countries, began to emerge on Wednesday. The dead included a couple who had just married three days earlier, an Australian hoping to start teaching English in France, the wife of a prominent Catalan politician, and a mother and daughter from suburban Washington.

The victims also include 16 pupils and two teachers from a school in Haltern am See in western Germany. They had been returning from a week-long exchange at a school near Barcelona.

Thomas Winkelmann, the managing director of Germanwings, a Lufthansa subsidiary, confirmed that as of 11am, the families of 123 victims - including 72 Germans and 35 Spaniards - had been notified. Citizens of Australia, Argentina, Iran, Venezuela, Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel were also on board.