Victorian Opera has lost both star leads in next year’s Flying Dutchman.

Both Petra Lang and Vitalij Kowalijow have withdrawn due to the ‘challenges of the vocal range of the demanding parts’.

Didn’t they read the score, or even listen to it, before agreeing to sing? Even among opera excuses this sounds fishy.

Their replacements are US aspirant Lori Philips and German trouper Oskar Hillebrandt.

Yo ho, to ho.

In May this year, there was a small demonstration outside Sanders Theatre at Harvard before a concert by Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi. One young man inside mounted the stage and expressed a view against the Putin regime and its musical allies.

That young man, Dr Roman Torgovitsky, was arrested by campus police and subsequently banned from Harvard. For life.

Two members of the Pussy Riot group, who spent months in Putin’s prisons for peaceful protest, have taken up his cause. If you believe in freedom of thought and civil justice, you should join their protest. Here’s what they write to the Harvard President, Drew Faust:

Dear President Faust,

On September 15, the Harvard Institute of Politics kindly provided us a forum to hold a discussion with students of your university. We spoke about human rights, feminism, freedom of speech, and the fine line that separates democratic regimes from authoritarian ones.

After our lecture, we invited several participants in the discussion to join us for dinner, including Harvard University alum Roman Torgovitsky, Ph.D. While we were leaving the Harvard campus, Dr. Torgovitsky was arrested by the Harvard Police, with no explanation given.

We proceeded with the students to the Harvard University Police Department, where we learned from Roman’s friends that Harvard had banned Roman from university grounds (by issuing him an oral no-trespass order) due to the fact that on May 11, 2014, after a concert by Russian musician Vladimir Spivakov, Dr. Torgovitsky approached Spivakov on stage. There, Roman expressed to Spivakov his concern that Spivakov had signed an open letter from cultural figures in the Russian Federation supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the “Ukraine question” that openly supported annexation of Crimea and further violent aggression against Ukraine. As a result, Dr. Torgovitsky was arrested and without any due process banned from coming to Harvard University for life.

It is disconcerting that Harvard University has a policy of banning some of Harvard alums engaged in non violent civil disobedience and political protest on campus without any due process, consideration by the Harvard community or even possibility to appeal such a decision to a special committee.

We hope that the prosecution of Roman Torgovitsky for attending our lecture will be halted. We would like to respectfully ask Harvard administration to lift the no-trespass order imposed on Roman Torgovitsky for life for the non-violent, peaceful expression of his opinion.

Roman Torgovitsky has many excellent and constructive suggestions to offer Harvard administration. First and foremost, it would be a great benefit for the Harvard community to institute a due process for placing no trespass order prohibiting alums from coming to the University property and create an appeal process that involves Harvard community. Second, Roman and his colleague Julia Khodor Beloborodov are spearheading a project to provide urgently needed education to Ukrainian physicians to provide physical and psychological trauma rehabilitation for thousands of Ukrainians who have been injured and scared as a result of the President Putin war in Ukraine. Harvard University could provide invaluable educational assistance in this endeavor.

We call on the Harvard administration to enter into a dialog with civil-society activists, and in particular with Roman Torgovitsky. After all, they and Harvard are pursuing the same goals: respect for human rights, peace, and education without borders.

Sincerely,
Masha Alekhina,
Nadya Tolokonnikova

Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist, is concerned about classical concerts.

He observes:

– ‘I think there’s something quite off-putting when you turn up and are given a seat number. It’s all quite formal.’

– It’s a little dispiriting to find how rigidly programmes are set. It’s very peculiar that usually orchestras know exactly what they are going to play two years ahead of time and it’s all booked, programmes are printed.’

– ‘In one of Mozart’s early letters, he’s boasting about one of his concerts to his father and is saying, ‘It’s amazing, the audience heard the first few bars and they liked the idea so they started clapping’, and it had that kind of excitement about it, which has kind of been squeezed out by the reverence and silence with which most classical concerts are done in now…. ‘And those 10 seconds of silence after every classical piece is played on the radio for it to sink in. It’s a bit peculiar.’

Can’t fault him, really.

He’s attempting a classical gig in Manchester next Friday.

Did George Antheil really write one into his score? Whatever, the New World Symphony booked one for the weekend.

Read review here.

That’s what the union wants to know. See below.

Fri Oct 10, 2014 3:14 pm (PDT) . Posted by:

Dear ROPA, ICSOM and OCSM e-lists,

During the past week I have received multiple reports and numerous complaints of local news TV cameras showing up, without prior knowledge or approval by either locals or committees to local symphony auditions in the warm up rooms, and elsewhere at the audition site.

Candidates have complained that to suddenly encounter TV news cameras in warm up rooms, destroys their warm up process and concentration. Moreover, many candidates do not wish to be identified as taking certain auditions, and therefore there is a privacy issue involved.

By extension, imagine if one of your management staff were to go and interview for a new position and walked into the interview and was confronted with TV camera lights ablaze. That would be inappropriate in either situation.

There have been many stories and articles about the symphonic auditions throughout the years, but most of those have been done with proper clearance and the knowledge and approval of the appropriate parties. It is interesting that both of these events occurred within the last week, which make me wonder if perhaps one of the management or marketing director blogs might be trumpeting this idea as a new way to publicize the local orchestra.

Therefore, locals and committees are well advised to be on the lookout for such activity. While I believe all want to see good public relations and new stories for their respective orchestras, this is not an acceptable.

Please advise me privately at _nathankahn@afm.org_ (mailto:nathankahn@afm.org) should you learn of further instances of this nature.

In Solidarity,

Nathan Kahn, Negotiator
Symphonic Services Division
American Federation of Musicians
Administrator-AFM Symphony Audition Complaint Hotline
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Sweden’s musicians are in mourning for the death of Mats Rondin, one of the country’s leading cellists who in recent years became an effective and popular conductor at the Gavle Symphony Orchestra and Malmo Opera.

Mats, who was just 54, made his concert debut at 16 and was invited by Mstislav Rostropovich to his cello festival in Riga. He premiered several works by Swedish composers and was preparing to conduct Miss Saigon in the coming season at Malmo Opera.

A modest, personable man, the shock of his passing is felt across the Swedish community and far beyond.

They’re down for Dresden in 2016, Bayreuth in 2017.  The conductor says: ‘Ich bin überzeugt,dass Anna und Piotr die Idealstimmen für Lohengrin sind.’ Full interview here.

In a studied riposte to the London critics who damned her at Glyndebourne as ‘dumpy’ and worse, the Irish mezzo Tara Erraught has gone walking the catwalks in the new Vogue.

Decked out in Dolce & Gabbana, she tells the fashion rag: ‘I’m a 36DD but that said, 60 per cent of the year I play men and boys because I’m a mezzo-soprano and a lot of older operas were written for castrati… For those, I’m nearly always in a bust-flattener…. I’m so used to being cinched in that I’ve started wearing belts over dresses.’

The musicians and the lockout merchants are observing media silence while talks continue with a federal negotiator.

But classical rapper Anthony Wise is under  no oath or obligation and he has some pretty cute rhymes about the klutzy Atlanta fixers.

Watch.

Prosecutors say there is no case to be brought against Paul Gambaccini, the pop music and former Radio 3 presenter, who has been under investigation for the past 12 months in the post-Jimmy Savile police operation into sexual assaults.

Gambaccini, 65, said he had suffered ’12 months of trauma’ and hoped to be back at the mike soon.

Jaap van Zweden, music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, has cancelled this week’s concerts. He has also pulled out of concerts in Dallas and Chicago due to a painful shoulder.

Van Zweden, 53, said his HK cancellation ‘has absolutely nothing to do with the protests’.

His replacement is Moscow’s Vasily Sinaisky.

Hong Kong last week  called off its international piano competition due to the unrest.

Julian Lloyd Webber, who ended his performing career due to a neck injury earlier this year, has also terminated his agency relationship.

Julian was a brand leader at IMG Artists and there was plenty more for the agency to do in the next phase of his public career, but he has decided to take matters in hand and part from the ailing company, which is losing many of its core personnel.

His diary will now be handled by his long-term assistant, John Redford. Julian says: ‘As my personal circumstances have changed so much recently in terms of my performing career, it did not make sense to remain any longer.’