Chief exec Cressida Pollock has marked her first year in the job with an article on ENO’s unique selling points:
Many of the people who make up our audience today are not “opera buffs”, and nor should they be. Our audience members have so many choices in what to do with an evening – to watch a series on Netflix, to meet friends for dinner, to go to a late night at a museum, or to one of the hundreds of live performances on each night in this city. We should not take their time, or money, for granted. It is our task to persuade them of three things – that opera is the most exciting art form of all, that seeing it live is an incomparable experience and that ENO is where they should see it.
And we need to persuade them of this in the midst of a cacophony of competing information. Opera is not expensive. Opera is not posh. Opera can speak to people in a way no other art form can. Challenging these prejudices is what makes our future at ENO so exciting. We have the opportunity to have an open conversation about how we can persuade audiences of the necessity of experiencing opera – its excitement, its relevance and its affordability.
The worst about this morning’s bombs in Brussels is the absence of shock.
A suicide bomber shouting a verse from the Quran blew himself up at the airport, killing many innocent people, at least a dozen, perhaps more.
Others planted bombs in the Metro during rush hour, causing further deaths.
And we are not shocked.
We go about our business, checking devices for updates.
After Paris, we tell ourselves, there were bound to be more coordinated attacks. Only a matter of time and place.
We pray for no-news.
We barely spare breath to condemn.
This is the new normal.
How we adjust to it is the test of our humanity.
The Dresden Staatskapelle and its chief conductor have renewed for three more years, taking them to 2020 and beating off exploratory overtures by the Berlin Philharmonic.
Dresden have been in residence since 2012, when the Berlin Phil quit for Baden-Baden.
The Beethovenhaus in Bonn has bought a letter that the composer wrote in 1813.
It’s addressed to Maria Eleonora Fuchs, a countess, and it mentions a severe personal crisis. This is unusually strong language for Beethoven. He is broke, has lost his patron and is suffering from ‘a torn heart’.
He is 43 years old and without prospects or means of sustenance.
It is not clear if the letter was ever delivered.
Police in Benbrook, Texas, last night brought charges of capital murder against Sofya Tsygankova, a Russian pianist, in connection with the deaths of her two children, Nika and Michela.
The children, aged five and one, were found dead by their father, Vadym Kholodenko, winner of the 2013 Cliburn Competition gold medal, when he came to visit last Thursday. The cause of death has not been disclosed, but there was no physical injury. Sofya was in the house, covered in stab wounds.
She is presently in hospital in Forth Worth. ‘We have probable cause, reason to believe, that she committed the homicides,’ said Benbrook police commander David Babcock.
The couple were going through a contested divorce.
The pianist Peter Takács, a professor at Oberlin, will undergo hand surgery in Cleveland today for an injury suffered while he was playing at Carnegie Hall. The audience was unaware. Here’s what Peter tells Slipped Disc:
I played a 3-concert series at Weill Hall entitled “The Beethoven Experience “.
After the second one, on November 13, the day of the Paris attacks, I tripped and fell on both my hands. It was clear that something was wrong with my right hand.
I proceeded to practice for my third concert, which took place on January 14, 2016, in spite of pain and inflammation on the radial side.
Later, a CT scan showed a fracture of the “hook of Hamate”. So, indeed, I played in Carnegie Hall with a broken bone in my right hand!
When athletes do this, we call them heroes.
One of the world’s 10 worst airlines just got a whole lot worse. This just in from UK-based violinist Walter Reiter:
So… Back from Oslo on Norwegian Air, nice red plane. Settling down in my seat, stewardess pulls violin out of overhead compartment and and tells me It has to be offloaded. I fumble for my printout of the rules that say violins are allowed. She seizes a child violin from somewhere, waves it in the air and says only that size of violin is permitted. I do my best to imitate general merriment and yell “it’s a toy, haha” .. a steward arrives: no violins allowed, it’s the rules. I show him the rules: violins up to 98 cm long are allowed, he says they are only allowed widthways not side ways. I say haha that’s not logical. I shove my violin back and sit down. This is war! I tell him there’s going to be an article in the New York Times about this, playing classy. Then the guy says ok this time but never again. Norwegian Air: back on the black list!
Walter adds:
These are the online rules of Norwegian Air. A shame their cabin staff needed me to teach them…
Take your instrument as hand baggage
You can bring a small musical instrument on board provided you do not exceed the hand baggage allowance for your fare type. If you’re travelling with a larger instrument, such as a violin or viola, then you can bring this instead of a carry-on bag. The instrument can be slightly bigger than a regular carry on bag, but must not exceed 90 x 35 x 20 cm and the carry-on weight limit for your fare type.
Can’t they train their cabin staff to read?
The German virtuoso Frank Peter Zimmermann relates what happened to him after a failing bank called in his previous Stradivarius.
It’s a tortuous tale of nights with the wrong violin, posted today by the Czech Philharmonic.
Despite not taking over as Kapellmeister until January 2018, Andris Nelsons has undertaken 15 heavy concerts in Leipzig next season, it was announced today. This is in addition to his considerable duties as music director in Boston and his busy guest conducting schedule.
Nelson, 37, is one of the most overworked maestros on the circuit.
How his Boston-Leipzig shuttle will work out is anyone’s guess.
In a breach with tradition, Gloucester Cathedral (est. 678 AD) is finally going mixed.
Announcement:Gloucester Cathedral is delighted to announce the establishment of Girl Choristers, who will sing as members of the Cathedral Choir for the first time in history. Auditions will be held on Saturday 23 April for girls aged 7-12.
See here for the evolution of girls choirs in English cathedrals.
The Norwegian double-bass player John Martin, 48, has been given a life sentence for murdering his wife Natalia Strelchenko at their Manchester home on their second wedding anniversary last August.
He will serve a minimum 18 years, reduced to 17 when time already spent in jail is taken into consideration.
Justice Laura Cox said he had inflicted a ‘brutal, sustained and unprovoked attack’.
Martin pleaded in defence that he had no recollection of the attack after consuming alcohol and diazepam. But he told police who arrived at the scene, ‘Kill me, kill me please, I have nothing to live for, I do not deserve to live’.
