The composer recently underwent vocal-cord surgery.
Best score nominee Alexandre Desplat will be unable to attend Sunday’s Oscar ceremonies because of recent throat surgery, a rep for the composer confirms.
The French native, already a two-time Oscar winner (for 2014’s “Grand Budapest Hotel” and 2017’s “The Shape of Water”), is nominated this year for his Japanese-flavored score for Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs.”
Life imitated art recently while Desplat was writing a 75-minute opera that will debut on Tuesday in Luxembourg. It is titled “Silence,” based on a short story by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, in which the author visits another writer who can no longer speak.
During the composition process, Desplat was also finding it difficult to speak, and physicians advised him to have “a surgical procedure to repair his vocal cords,” the rep said. “He had the procedure, has successfully recuperated, and has regained full use of his vocal cords.”
The composer had hoped to fly to Los Angeles for the Oscar ceremony, but doctors have advised him “to refrain from flying long distances at this stage of his recovery.” Desplat will be watching the ceremony at his home in Paris.
He is currently working on the score for “The Secret Life of Pets 2.”
The other four original-score nominees — Terence Blanchard (“BlacKkKlansman”), Ludwig Goransson (“Black Panther”), Nicholas Britell (“If Beale Street Could Talk”) and Marc Shaiman (“Mary Poppins Returns”) — are all expected to attend on Sunday.