Tuesday’s live broadcast from English National Opera of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance has just blown a big hole in the opera streaming business.

Pirates, in Mike Leigh’s production, took £600,000 at the UK box office at a single screening, reaching an audience of over 40,000 people.

The previous UK best was the Metropolitan Opera’s broadcast of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, which grossed £504,000 in total, including repeat screenings.

pirates eno

That’s impressive. Wonder if the Arts Council gets the point? Doubt it: their website crashed today, presumably for want of visitors.

Sistema Scotland has received an ‘extremely positive’ report from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, which says it has ‘the potential to significantly enhance participants’ lives, prospects, health and wellbeing.’

Sistema’s Big Noise has been teaching children in Raploch since 2008 and Govanhill since 2013.

The First Minister is a fan.

nicola sturgeon cellist

Nicola Sturgeon and Fiona Hyslop at Holy Cross Primary School in Govanhill. Photo: Chris Watt/Scottish Govt.

women on podium

We love today’s tribute to a growing trend on Seattle Opera social media. How many can you name?

You can see a slightly larger version here.

I have written a reflection on the failed Berlin Philharmonic election for The Spectator, a few thoughts on cultural attitudes as well as orchestral politics.

The intense focus on the Berlin Philharmonic election was triggered by the emergence of a German candidate as music director, the first since Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1922 (Furtwängler’s 1955 successor, Herbert von Karajan, was a fly-in Austrian who overnighted at the Kempinski Hotel).

The German of 2015 — hailed by some as a man of destiny — is Christian Thielemann, Berlin born and bred, German as bratwurst in a bierkeller. German, and then some.

 

Read the full article here.

thielemann merkel

After 15 years, the Dutch-based Rubens Quartet is calling it quits:

 

rubens quartet

 

“We, the members of the Rubens Quartet, after having enjoyed a rewarding and intensive international career, have decided that we will end our collaboration as a quartet at the end of the 2015/16 season. The quartet has been at the center of our professional lives since the year 2000 and we look back on those years with much gratefulness and satisfaction. Now we feel that it is the right time for us all to pursue other musical activities that will present us with interesting new challenges.

Since the beginning of our quartet career we have had the pleasure of playing concerts all over the world: we have wonderful memories of our many trips to the US (where we toured eleven times and performed in thirteen different states), our regular summer appearances in France, as well as Great Britain, Israel, Hungary, Romania, Italy and several others. We also look back on a rich concert history throughout our home country of the Netherlands, where over the years we have had the opportunity to perform in virtually every large and small venue that offers chamber music concerts. We have had the honor of sharing the stage with wonderful and inspiring guest artists. Our last two internationally acclaimed CDs and our educational DVD “The Art of Perception” serve as documents of our special time together.

This coming year will be our farewell season. We are very much looking forward to the last two programs that we will present together as the Rubens Quartet: joining us are bass-baritone Robert Holl and Godfried Hoogeveen, former principal cellist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. We hope very much that you will join us for one or more of these special concerts. Starting in the spring of 2016 we will all be embarking upon new artistic adventures and look forward to performing for you in other musical contexts.

We heartily thank you all for your support and interest these many years!”

The Quartet members are Sarah Kapustin and Tali Goldberg (violins), Roeland Jagers (viola), Joachim Eijlander (cello).

 

Reactions in Russia to the latest glasnost on cultural earnings has been a curious mixture of envy and pride.

According to Valery Gergiev’s tax declaration, he owns three plots of land, six apartments, one cottage and two cars, in addition to a tax-year income of 340m rubles, just under seven million US dollars.

Some politicians grumbled that it was unfair for a music director to rake in so much when wages across the cultural sector fell last year by 40 percent.

But a director of the Institute for Social Policy, one Sergei Smirnov, took an aspirational view: ‘For God’s sake, if the maestro can earn 340 million, one should only be glad for him. I don’t understand why this (fuss) is necessary.’

gergiev-prof

The baritone has pulled out of tomorrow’s Nabucco ‘for serious family reasons’. He is replaced by Zeljko Lucic.

He’s due at Covent Garden next week.

domingo foscari roh

The Utah Symphony has signed a three-year contract with its musicians.

That’s nice.

But they could only do so with the help of a federal negotiator. ‘I’m proud of the successful outcome of these efforts and grateful for the musicians’ cooperation and support in ratifying this agreement early,’ said Melia Tourangeau, outgoing USUO President & CEO. ‘Under the guidance of Federal Mediator Kevin Hawkins, we were able to have productive discussions and build a level of trust I’ve never before experienced during contract talks.’

Why the hell is that? Why can’t orchestral managers and musicians, who went to the same schools and share a common goal, talk to one another without calling in Big Government? But the Met did it. So did Atlanta.

You want to know what’s wrong with US orchestras? That’s wrong.

I’ll take questions on the subject next week at the LOA convention in Cleveland.

utah symphony

 

Bruce Lundvall died yesterday. A record-biz lifer he rekindled the jazz market in the 1980s by reviving the Blue Note label with such talents as Dianne Reeves, Norah Jones and Bobby McFerrin.

A member of the CBS Masterworks team for two decades until then, he was a music-loving, self-effacing, talent-seeking kind of guy, the best of the old record civilisation. He died of the effects Parkinson’s Disease, aged 79.

 

bruce lundvall

On Sunday, Bob Belden suffered a massive coronary and was put on life support.

A former head of A&R at Blue Note, Bob was a versatile saxophonist and prodigious composer who won several Grammys for his Miles Davis reissues.

We hear from close colleagues that a decision was taken today to switch off his life support. Bob was 58.

A whole record culture is slipping away from us.

bob belden

The result of yesterday’s wave of brief strikes was a swift agreement today to award all musicians in state orchestras and stage staff at opera houses a pay increase of 2.1 or 2.4 percent.

‘We always wanted them to get a well-deserved pay rise,’ said an employers’ spokesman. ‘The strikes were unnecessary.’

Read here (auf Deutsch).

rattle strike jacket

lang lang doctor

As of today, the Chinese pianist is an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts of New York University.

The point being?

lang lang doctor2

To devalue the credibility of an NYU PhD.

What in socks has he done to earn a doctorate?

Tim Page has started a compulsive thread on his Facebook page, calling in song lines that you totally misheard.

Tim heard, ‘You’re like a maggot. I’m like a piece of meat.’ The real lyric is ‘You’re like a magnet. I’m like a piece of steel….’ (Not sure which is preferable.)

I well remember a pop refrain that ran, ‘And I did what I did for Maria.’ My teenaged self and several friends thought the singer was describing an anterior sexual activity.

It appears there is a technical name for these things: a Mondegreen.

It is drawn from a Scottish ballad:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen (recte: And laid him on the green).

Whatever.

So how about the opera and concert lines that we constantly mishear, or hear misquoted?

opera singers pasta graziella sciutti

 

Pasta Diva.

When I am laid in her.

Come for tea, my people.

Send us your favourites. Here’s an Orfful one to get you started.