This is a lesson with Rachid Abou Houdeyfa, imam of a Sunni mosque in Brest, northwest France. The young imam – energetic, articulate and charismatic, dressed in conteporary gear – calls his lesson ‘music, as explained to children’.
He asks first which of the children like music. A host of little hands shoot up. The imam tells them: ‘that is a grave sin… Allah does not like music because that’s what the devil likes.’
He continues: ‘People who sing, the prophet said they will be swallowed up by the earth. They will be transformed into monkeys and pigs. Who of you still loves music?’
He goes on to forbid parents from letting their children learn to play instruments.
This is what France is fighting in 2015, all too ineffectually it seems.
In a subsequent press interview, the imam says he does not indoctrinate children. He just teaches.
This is my album of the week on sinfinimusic.com, ‘a concept album that combines entertainment, speculation, low gossip and music so high you think it’s going off the scale.’
The opera house being built in Harbin, China, is – appropriately, you might think – the brainchild of a firm of architects called MAD. Harbin is a wetlands environment and the designers were concerned that the opera house should rise from the marshes, rather in the way the concert hall in Lucerne rises from the lake.
The pianist Boris Giltburg thought long and hard about the hackneyed Leonard Bernstein platitude that gets trotted out by music leaders and on mass media every time civilisation comes under mortal attack.
Boris’s conclusion: ‘Music, and any art, by the very fact of creating, of bringing something new into the world, is in opposition to any force which comes to kill, destroy and terrorise.’ Read his reasoned argument here, far more cogent than the blethering of the general commentariat.
Boris’s response, as a pianist, was to play a chaconne, ‘a funeral dance of Spanish origin, which several classical composers have turned to in order to express their thoughts on death.’ But not necessarily the obvious ones.
Listen here.
And here.
We reported yesterday that Chen Reiss, the designated Gretel, had pulled out of Vienna’s new version of the faily-favourite with an unspecified illness.
Today, Daniela Sindram had to be replaced as Hansel at the dress rehearsal for much the same reasons.
The company are confident Daniela will recover in time for Thursday’s opening, when Christian Thielemann conducts Adrian Noble’s new production.
UPDATE: Chen has just posted: Due to a chest infection I sadly had to withdraw from the production of Hänsel und Gretel at the Vienna State Opera. It is a marvelous production in every aspect and I wish my colleagues a big Toi, toi, toi for opening night.
Yesterday’s performance of Luigi Rossi’s Orpheus at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse was cancelled at a few hours notice yesterday by the Royal Opera House ‘due to several singers being ill’.
This seems to have been the final scheduled performance of a rediscovered baroque work.
Struggling English National Opera, on probation to improve its financial position, has been granted a qualified extra year of state funding. The measure, as so often with ACE, is neither here nor there. It is buried with news of a gallery in Colchester doing rather well.
From the ACE statement:
The Arts Council believes that the ENO is fully committed to achieving positive and sustainable changes to its operating model. A CEO has been appointed until 2018 to lead the company through substantial operational changes and the organisation has made good progress in restructuring the financial and operational management of the company. Progress has also been made in strengthening the organisation’s governance and leadership structure – a permanent Chair has now been recruited and Board membership is being refreshed.
Given the progress made so far, the Arts Council has confirmed an additional year (2017-18) of funding for ENO of £12.38m. The funding will provide the organisation further time to implement the necessary changes to ensure that it has a sustainable and resilient business model capable over the long term of producing and presenting excellent opera to large audiences.
From ENO’s response:
We are very happy that Arts Council England have confirmed our third year of funding. We continue to work closely together to ensure the continued financial stability of ENO. Our recent appointments to the Board and Executive Management Team demonstrate the steps the Company is taking to strengthen governance and significant work has taken place over the past year to ensure the continued financial stability of ENO.
Previously, ACE had limited ENO to £30.5m over two years of ‘special funding’ before an unspecified threat of withdrawal. ACE seems more concerned with saving face than saving art.
Saturday night at a concert in Stockholm Madonna sang a tribute to the Paris victims. With only a guitar for company she performed La Vie en Rose, signature song of Edith Piaf and a cherished epoch.
One may quibble with the interpretation but the sentiment cannot be faulted.
From Ingrid Adamiker:
Hier soir [Sunday]… Wiener Staatsoper … the lights went off and Marco Armiliato reached the pit. Marco kept his hands down. A singer, dressed as Parisian market woman, stepped out of the burgundy-red drapes: Renate Gutsch, since 1988 a chorus soprano at the Vienna State Opera, rose to speak with trembling voice. She pointed out that La Bohème takes place in Paris.
So, artists and co-workers of the Opera wanted to take this coincidence to give a face to their abhorrence of terror and violence. In memory of the victims of the Paris’ attacks, everyone should stand up in silence.
Some 2,100 members of the public, staff, artists behind stage… remained in such a silence you could hear a pin drop…
This was a kind of a moment, I will never, never ever, forget in my life.
Gutsch thanked the audience for its sympathy and wished us all nevertheless, or better, exactly because of that, a great evening at the Wiener Staatsoper.
We will do the same again today.
Monday 16 November @ 12:00 High Noon Paris’ time.
UPDATE: We’ve been advised that Renate Gutsch is Austrian. She was dressed as a French marketwoman for the second act. We stand corrected.
Twenty-three musicians from 19 nations are arriving in Paris this morning to play a concert in memory of victims of Friday’s massacre. They include eight concertmasters from 17 leading orchestras.
The perfromance, tonight at 7pm, will consist of works by Barber and Tschaikovsky. It will be directed by concertmasters of the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France and the Paris Opéra orchestra.
The event, planned originally by Valery Gergiev’s World Orchestra for Peace, to mark the 70th anniversary of UNESCO, will be webcast here.
The words belong to Bono, whose U2 concerts in Paris were cancelled in the general mourning and tight security. He went on to say:
This is the first direct hit on music that we’ve had in this so called war-on-terror or whatever it’s called. It’s very upsetting. These are our people. This could be me at a show. You at a show, in that venue. It’s a very recognizable situation for you and for me and the coldblooded aspect of this slaughter is deeply disturbing and that’s what I can’t get out of my head. … I mean again we didn’t call it off. It was cancelled, honest, and I understand perfectly why. I think music is very important. I think U2 has a role to play and I can’t wait till we get back to Paris and play and that’s what I’m feeling from the messages we’re receiving from music fans is these people will not set our agenda. They will not organize our lives for us.
Good words, worth sharing.
The percussionist with an unforgettable name – Telemachus Lesbines – is no more.
Tele was principal percussionist and timpanist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for thirty years and a well-known teacher. He was 87.
