A production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado has been withdrawn in New York after activists demanded it should be played and sung by Asian performers, rather than non-Asians pretending to be Japanese.
The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players (NYGASP) appear to have caved in at the first hint of protest, fearing to provoke a substantial minority group.
Both sides, it seems, have lost the plot.
Mikado is pure parody. It is a send-up of the British ruling classes in the late 19th century and has much to say about their successors today. Its Japanese setting is a theatrical gimmick, no more racially defining than the Cornish village in the Pirates of Penzance. Victorian audiences, for whom it as written, understood that it was aimed at their system of governance and their own acquiescence to it. No UK production that we have seen – most durably Jonathan Miller’s at ENO – raised a scintilla of suspicion that the absence of Asian actors was discriminatory or distortive.
Yet this is the mind-warping nonsense we read from those in New York who would forcibly recast it: White privilege is telling the stories of people of color and crowding out their actual, lived narratives. Even when those stories come from a place of prejudice, as with Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, they can be told in ways that highlight the legacy of white supremacy and give voices to people of color.
There is no earthly reason for Mikado to be sung by ethnic Japanese any more than Cio-cio san, Suzuki and half the cast of Madam Butterfly should be restricted to singers of the same ethnicity. The New York cancellation of Mikado has nothing do to with the work itself. It is never a good sign when a company cancels a production under pressure. Both the outcry and the outcome reflect racial confusions in that city, at this time.
It may be that New York needs a new Mikado now more than ever before.
A Hong Kong university student faced a long investigation and the threat of a huge fine for carrying his cello on the East Rail Line. Ho Ka-yeung says plain-clothes officials measured the cello case and declared it 4cm too long.
This is, alarmingly, the third such incident on Hong Kong’s public transportation system this week.
Read a full account here, and please be careful where you take your cello.
The Chinese conductor Yu Long will share the Global Citizen Award in New York on October 1 with the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger, you won’t need to be reminded, took President Nixon to China.
Yu Long is being recognised ‘for his contributions to bridging the East-West gap through classical music’.
The most influential conductor in China, Yu Long, 51 is simultaneously artistic director of Beijing Music Festival and the China Philharmonic Orchestra, music director of the Shanghai and Guangzhou symphony orchestras, and co-director of the MISA Shanghai Summer Festival.
Sending a message of good wishes to Jewish viewers for the fast of Yom Kippur this week, Chicago station WGNNews posted this image behind the newsreader.
It’s the badge that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany and German-occupied countries, prior to their deportation to the death camps.
The station said later it ‘failed to recognize that the image was an offensive Nazi symbol.’
Do be careful where you get your news.
Here’s an apology from the station’s general manager and news director. They don’t seem much the wiser.
The Czech, 45, has guest-conducted widely in Europe but he has only ever been music director of a company for two years, in Brno, and he has conducted the WNO orchestra just once – in a cathedral concert. Could be interesting.
(The agent is IMG Artists.)
UPDATE: IMG breakout agent Libby Abrahams reports Hanus is now with her boutique agency, Keynote.
Some business-class quotes from opening night:
Jacques Brand, Deutsche Bank CEO (North America) and a Met Opera advisory board member:
‘Tonight we enjoyed an opera composed by an Italian, based on a British play, brought to life by an American director, conducted by a French Canadian, and performed by a cast of Serbians, Bulgarians, Latvians and others. I can tell you, working for a global organization, this is the kind of collaboration on a global scale that we all strive for.’ (Deutsche Bank has been lead sponsor of the Met’s opening night for 15 years.)
Julie Macklowe, former hedge-fund manager: ‘We just care that they have enough money that we can still come.’
Daisy Soros, Met advisory director, on plans to give Sunday performances: ‘If (finance people) come during the week, they fall asleep; on Sundays, they’re alive.’
Full business-class report from Amanda Gordon on Bloomberg, here.
His name’s Alexander Malofeev and he’s supposed to be 13 years old, though he doesn’t look it.
Uncannily mature, he’s a pupil of Larissa Gergeieva and he has worked several times with her brother. He’s now taking time off school to appear at Larissa’s current festival in the Gergievs’ home province, north Ossetia. Watch.
Paul Lewis, who damaged his hand in falling after an attack by seagulls outside Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, is in renewed distress.
Paul was due to play three dates with the Boston Symphony next month, in Boston and at Carnegie Hall. But here’s a message from his management, Ingpen & Williams, released by the BSO:
Due to undergoing emergency surgery last week, it is with enormous regret that Paul Lewis has announced his withdrawal from his performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, both in Boston and on tour to New York. The medical procedure was a success, and Mr. Lewis is recovering well, but his doctors have advised him not to travel for at least 6 weeks. Mr. Lewis is so disappointed to lose what for him was one of the highlights of his current season but hopes to return to Boston again as soon as is possible.
There is no indication whether the surgery was in any way connected to his Liverpool fall. We wish Paul a speedy recovery. He will be replaced at the BSO by Lars Vogt.
The Belgian government has confirmed plans to merge the orchestra of La Monnaie with the Belgian National Orchestra. The memo setting out the plans will require an army of bureaucrats to administer.
He dressed like the young Jack Nicholson in a very bad film.
Erina Yashima, newly appointed répétiteur in Kaiserslautern, has been named Solti Conducting Apprentice with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She gets to spend 10 weeks a year for the next two years assisting Riccardo Muti.
Press release below.
CHICAGO—The jury of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s (CSOA) International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship—CSO Music Director and Jury Chair Riccardo Muti; American soprano Carol Vaness; CSO Concertmaster Robert Chen; CSO Principal Cello John Sharp; CSO Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin; and CSOA Vice President of Artistic Planning Cristina Rocca —and the Negaunee Music Institute of the CSO are pleased to announce that Erina Yashima has been named the Third Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprentice.
As part of the two-year conducting apprenticeship, beginning in February 2016 and continuing through January 2018, Yashima will spend at least 10 weeks a year studying and assisting Muti in Chicago during his residencies with the CSO each season. The apprenticeship also includes close work with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO’s training orchestra for young professional musicians, including the opportunity to lead several rehearsals and a performance with the Civic Orchestra each year. The specific responsibilities included in the two-year apprenticeship are tailored to the individual who holds the position.
At the live audition that took place at Symphony Center, the finalists were required to lead the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in a rehearsal of symphonic repertoire, and also to coach soprano Laura Wilde and baritone Anthony Clark Evans, both members of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago in opera arias from the piano.
German-born Erina Yashima was selected in consideration of her distinctive artistic qualities displayed throughout the selection process. She was recently appointed répétiteur with conducting duties of the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern. From 2013-2015, she was the music director of the Freies Studentenorchester Rostock. In 2013 she was given the Award of outstanding excellence by the Musikakademie Rheinsberg for the opera production she conducted there that year. Her guest conducting experiences include a collaboration with El Sistema in Venezuela, where she conducted two youth orchestras (May 2015).
The creation of the CSO International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship was announced by Muti in October 2009 as part of his larger vision for the CSOA. This vision includes the opportunity to build on the CSO’s great tradition of training young musicians through the creation of an apprenticeship which fosters the talents of promising young conductors and invests in the future of the art form. The program is named for Sir Georg Solti, who served as music director of the CSO from 1969 to 1991, not only because of his deep connection with the CSO, but also in honor of his commitment to connecting with young musicians.
Earlier in their respective careers, both Sir Georg Solti and Riccardo Muti refined their musicianship through their studies and work with singers in the opera house, and Muti remains passionate about the importance of a conductor’s ability to rehearse with an artist at the piano. He regards keyboard and vocal-coaching skills as crucial in the creation of a complete musician: one who is able to stand before of an orchestra with natural authority. Muti’s sincere hope in establishing this apprenticeship was to identify the promising young conductor who will benefit most from his tutelage and the unique opportunities of working with the CSO and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. The CSO’s International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship is a program of the Negaunee Music Institute at the CSO.
Funding for the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship is provided by a generous grant from The Claire Rosen & Samuel Edes Foundation. The Foundation’s deep commitment to education and the arts in America provides a promising young conductor the financial means to focus on their work with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Muti and the rare opportunities this experience provides.
David Gockley is retiring next August, when he will be 73, after ten years as general director.
After an international search, SanFran has decided to promote from within.
The new guy is Matthew Shilvock, associate general director for the past five years. He’s young – 39 – and English, born in Kidderminster.
