The Staatsoper woke up 333,000 Euros richer this morning.
Apparently, a defunct private club called Pro Opera, discontinued in 1988, was found to have left substantial assets. Since the club existed to support opera in Vienna, the money goes – ching! – straight into Staatsoper coffers.
We regret to report the death on Sunday of the prolific and popular composer, Stephen Paulus.
Stephen suffered a massive stroke in July 2013 and spent the last months of his life in a care home. He was 65.
A Minnesotan for almost all his life, he wrote 10 operas, 60 orchestral scores and more than 150 works for chorus, many of them widely performed. He is probably best known outside the US for the 1982 opera, The Postman Always Rings Twice.
He was co-founder of the American Composers Forum and a generous mentor to many younger colleagues.
1 The film is a helluva lot more elegant.
2 The playing is p.d. good.
3 The first person to give him a dime is a busy young woman.
4 The sound is better on the Paris Metro than in DC.
5 People actually stop and listen.
The violinist is Renaud Capucon. He is playing Gluck’s Orpheus melody on a Stradivarius, two years after Joshua Bell’s Washington stunt.
Simon Lelouch’s sensitive film received a fraction of the attention directed towards Bell.
7:57 Am-Pm, 11′ from Simon Lelouch on Vimeo.
The colourful British violinist has lent his services to the instrument dealership, J&A Beare, who – after a century of deliberation – have finally decided to taken in Sotheby’s and Christie’s in the auction market.
Bids open tomorrow (Monday) on the Beare’s site here.
Nigel is pumping up the product right now. Who’d have guessed he was a capitalist at heart?
From the press release:
Europe’s leading purveyor of antique stringed instruments launches its first online auction
Bidding open: Monday 20-Tuesday 28 October
“A great violin opens up your parameters and gives you access to sounds you never imagined you had access to before. On the other hand, you need a great player to show what a great instrument can do, so it’s like a partnership really.” Nigel Kennedy, October 2014
For the first time in its 122 year history, the internationally recognised stringed instrument dealer J & A Beare will offer players and investors from across the globe the opportunity to buy fine instruments and bows in an online auction.
With over 35 instruments – 30 violins, including a Stradivarius dating from 1698 and two Guadagninis (from 1767 and 1782); 3 violas; 4 cellos – and 10 bows, Beares’ auction is the largest sale of fine instruments, in playable condition, to be available on the market at the same time.
Unique to the field of auctions, instruments sold will be accompanied by a J & A Beare Certificate of Authenticity, recognised internationally as authoritative documentation of an instrument’s origin. As well as authenticating their instruments, Beares offer an after-sales care which is econd to none, yet with a total estimated sale value of up to £8 million, the starting estimate for an early 20th century French violin begins as low as £4,000.
We informed you a couple of weeks back that the irrepressible mezzo Joyce DiDonato was about to appear late at night in a Brooklyn ballroom where no diva foot had ever trod before.
Well, here’s the video evidence – just in.
Nothing quite like it since Pierre Boulez threw his rug concerts.
Reports from Paris say that a couple from the Gulf were asked to leave the Bastille in the middle of a performance of La Traviata after the woman refused to remove her face covering.
The pair were seated in the most expensive seats, costing 231 Euros each.
Jean-Philippe Thiellay, deputy director of the Opéra, said the woman had entered the auditorium unnoticed. He was obliged to take action because a French law, enacted in 2011, forbids full facial covering in public. Offenders can be fined 150 Euros and forced to attend a course in citizenship.
Thiellay said he sent an official to speak to the lady, whose husband spoke on her behalf. The husband agreed that they should leave and did not ask for a refund.
He was prompted to act, apparently, after a complaint from chorus members who did not like performing for a faceless audience member.
You wonder how they get through Ballo in Maschera.
Opponents of John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer, which opens tomorrow night at the Met, are jubilant at the capture of a trophy march leader. Rudolph Giuliani, who has signalled his participation in the protest, acquitted himself with proficiency and sympathy as Mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks.
His opposition to the opera is vested in his investigation of the case it dramatises. ‘As United States Attorney, I investigated the Leon Klinghoffer murder by Yasir Arafat,’ he is on the record as saying. ‘I knew, in detail, the Americans he murdered. I went over their cases.’
Some, however, contest his claim to have investigated the case.
Austrian media are reporting the death, aged 84, of Wolfgang Hutter, a fantasy artist whose 1974 designs for Mozart’s Magic Flute are among the most memorable ever imagined.
His stage designs were seen at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Volksoper, Theater an der Wien, Graz Opera and Theater in der Josefstadt
Gregor Gysi, the former East German middleman who is now head of the Left party in the German Bundestag, has been hired by members of the Wagner family to protect their rights on the board of trustees at Bayreuth.
His principal client is Nike Wagner, presently head of the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, along with other disenfranchised Wagners who are paying Gysi to keep an eye on the old farm once Katharina Wagner assumes sole control a year from now.
The poisoned legacy lives on.
They give you plenty of meds to numb the pain during and after an operation Some of the meds have unfortunate side-effects.
Try listening to music instead, is the advice from the Anesthesiology 2014 conference in New Orleans.
Dr. Flower Austin, D.O., anesthesiology resident at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, reported on a study of 56 patients undergoing elective hysterectomies. Half chose to listen to jazz after the operation, the other half to wear noise cancellation headphones.
Heart rate, blood pressure, pain and anxiety levels were surveyed over half an hour. Both groups’ heart rates dropped significantly. The jazz lovers’ heart rate was lower after 20 minutes than the noise cancellers.
Why didn’t they try Classic FM?
Talk to your doctor.
The Berlin Jazz Festival is has a new artistic director. He is the retiring chief sports writer of the Guardian, Richard Williams.
Richard, 66, has one of the most diverse careers in UK print media. He has been head of artists and repertoire at Island Records, editor of Time Out and Melody Maker, assistant editor of the Times and sports writer for the Independent and the Guardian.
He said of his new appointment: Ich frage mich nicht, was Jazz war, sondern was Jazz ist und was Jazz werden kann. Für mich stellte das Jazzfest Berlin immer eine Plattform von Möglichkeiten und Provokationen dar.’ I don’t ask myself what jazz was, rather what it is and what it could become. For me, the Berlin Jazzfest has always been a platform for possibilities and provocations.
Further proof that there is life after print media.
Message from Sonya Yoncheva:
“Dear all, my husband and I are delighted and extremely happy to inform you that our little Mateo was born on the 6th of October, in Switzerland! We feel all very well.” Sonya
“Chers tous, mon mari et moi sommes enchantés et extrêmement heureux de vous informer de la naissance de notre petit Mateo, le 6 octobre dernier, en Suisse ! Nous nous portons tous à merveille.” Sonya
She expects to be back in December.
