That’s what the Estonians claim: 30,000 singers, 100,000 in the audience. Final sing-out today. Livestream here later this afternoon.

estonian song

h/t: Paavo Järvi

The Liverpool Echo has a gallery of pictues from the world premiere of Michael Nyman’s symphony in memory of the Hillsborough disaster, where 96 Liverpool football fans died and the causes were covered up for decades. Survivors and relatives attended the cathedral performance.

Click here for pictures. No national reviews have yet appeared.

nyman liverpool             hillsborough symphony

 

Castro, one of Ghana’s leading musicians is missing, presumed dead, after a ski-boat accident in the Volta Delta. Castro, 32, is thought to have dived into the lake to rescue a friend who was not wearing a lifejacket. The pair were on a weekend getaway with footballer, Asamoah Gyan.

 

Castro-Murder-Dem-lyrics

Report from a Facebook friend:

If you happened to be in Terminal 1 at LAX just now and heard Sorcerer’s Apprentice wafting through the air, it was me serenading the TSA agents in hopes that my bassoon wouldn’t be confiscated. They insisted I prove it was a musical instrument. People were videotaping the whole kerfuffle.

Further comment:

This happened to me in Iowa at the aptly-abbreviated SUX airport, only I just had a mouthpiece.

 

music airport 2

photo: Reuters

We regret to report the death of Thierry Scherz, founder and artistic director of the Sommets Musicaux in Gstaad, Switzerland, and a popular figure in the internatioal music business.

His family have announced that Thierry took his life in Vienna, ‘in a moment of depression’.

The funeral is Thursday, in Gstaad.

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Paul Leighton, 48, former finance manager of the Buxton Opera House in Derbyshire, has been jailed for two years. He was found guilty of stealing quarter of a million pounds to fund his personal pleasures, including a season ticket to Manchester United. Court report here.

buxton opera

 

The Metropolitan Opera stage union has reacted angrily to a Wall Street Journal article about their pay and conditions:

metropolitan-opera exterior

 

 

From Today’s Wall Street Journal about the Metropolitan Opera:
Eric Gibson’s half-true “facts” exemplify the sort of Peter Gelb reasoning that will cause the Metropolitan Opera to lose its coming season (“A Modern Opera: Fat Unions May Kill the Fat Lady,” op-ed, June 28).

Of course 66% of the budget goes to labor. Labor (the singers and instrumentalists who are the opera) is 100% of the reason people buy tickets to opera. Who else should the money go to—Peter Gelb’s chauffeur’s salary?

The chorus does not have “nine weeks” off. After a vacation of five weeks, during which they rest and replenish their voices (unlike every other worker in the world, their “tools” can’t be replaced when worn out), there are four weeks of compensatory time (an old Met-proposed cost savings which compensates them for the 33 weekends and four national holidays they have to work, an actual total of seven weeks) during which they self-rehearse the new productions for the following season.

The chorus doesn’t get paid for work not done. They’re guaranteed four shows a week, but Mr. Gelb schedules them for five or six every week, with 13-hour days, every day. The chorus doesn’t get paid for wearing their shoes during lunch. The $45 “costume lunch fee” is an old Met-proposed way to save $128 per chorister for otherwise required on-the-clock costume changes.

And obviously none of the Met’s labor expense goes to the unions. It goes to the performers who make the opera.

Peter Gelb’s legacy is one of waste, excess and extravagance, and a box office in free fall, which is bankrupting the Met. He refuses to change or to program what ticket buyers want to see. The conclusion is unavoidable that the only way in which to save the Met is to replace Peter Gelb.

Alan Gordon, Executive Director, American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO

It was everywhere in the 1970s, an Athena Posters icon of questionable innocence. The model, Fiona Butler, was never paid.

tennis smock

 

 

The tennis dress sold this weekend for seven times the auctioneer’s estimate

Since the BBC has gone into lockdown mode over the Rolf Harris conviction and the only place I could discuss its neglected responsibility was on Sky News, let’s just reflect for a minute on this sketch from Not the Nine O’Clock News. Watch, and wonder. Who knew?

rolf harris

A touching and thoughtful post by opera student Chelsea Feltman poses three questions which should never be asked of a young artist (and obviously are, all the time). The questions:

-”Wow! So are you going to be on American Idol?”

-”The Phantom of the Opera is my favorite!”

-”Have you heard of the amazing 14-year-old opera singer, Jackie Evancho?”

Chelsea, alert to bad mood music, argues that opera will only be saved if the quality of singing comes first:

I just want to be an opera singer who does interesting things that fulfill me artistically, and I’m tired of waiting for the perfect opportunity to appearCreating new, independent work does not detract from my love of traditional grand opera.But at times it can feel like a conflict of interestWith so many elements balanced so precariously, it often feels like the singing comes last.

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But the singing! That’s why we all got into this mess of a businessFew people know the innumerable hours of study and practice that go into making an opera singer—of the musical, interpretive, linguistic, and stagecraft skills one has to master in order to tackle some of the most challenging music on earthI often liken opera to the Olympics of singing; my voice teacher compares hearing a great singer fully in control of her instrument to watching a figure skater flawlessly execute a technical programIt’s absolutely thrillingThere is an athleticism to operatic singing that is truly stunning to beholdThat a single human voice can project over a full orchestra and envelop an audience of 4,000 people without any artificial amplification; that we never rely on autotune to deliver a note-perfect performance; that we can sing higher, lower, faster, and longer than anyone else in the world—all while telling the greatest stories and giving life to the most intense human emotionsHow is that not exciting? In my heart of hearts, I feel that if people really knew this, they wouldn’t dismiss opera as elitist or irrelevant or ridiculousAt its best, it is a perfect marriage of technical mastery, physical endurance, and artistic vision, and no amount of sexy costumes or high-concept set design can ever displace that.

Plenty of  food here for discussion.

Real the full article here.

Roger Federer loves Beethoven, goes to concerts and might have made a great violinist (the last, according to Anne-Sophie Mutter).

Novak Djokovic is (a mutual friend informs us) an opera fanatic, especially of Verdi.

It’s a clash of cultures in today’s final.

Federer with mum vsdjokovic_dessay

(with Mum at Rotterdam Phil)                        (with Natalie Dessay at the Met. photo Ken Howard)

I was born in a London maternity hospital six days after the National Health Service was founded, in July 1948. My mother (I’m told) said: ‘I had to pay for the others. This one I want for free.’

As a consequence of my date of birth, I have always seen myself as one of the founders of the NHS and assumed I had a low entry number.

Apparently not. In a new gimmick offered by the Labour Party, you can now check your NHS birth number … and mine is 10,815.

That’s disappointing. It’s also a bit puzzling. Was Britain’s baby boom really advancing at the rate of 2,000 births a day? Three quarters of a million UK births in 1948? Can anyone verify that?

The Labour Party tells me this is their ‘best estimate’, based on my forename and date of birth. Not sure I believe it. Click here to find your supposed UK birth number.

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