The Pittsburgh music director has been talking to his hometown paper, Vienna’s Kurier, about making ends meet and filling the house in a city that is drifting away from European culture.
He gets his musicians to introduce each concert on video and is encouraging young people to attend his concerts dressed in jeans.
Read here.
He’s in Detroit this week.
He was meant to be playing the Elgar concerto with Leonard Slatkin but changed his mind a few weeks ago and will perform a work of his own, ‘Dedications’, its movements named after Jarek Smietana, Isaac Stern, Stephane Grappelli and Mark O’Connor.
The former wild-child British violinist, now 59, last played in the US in 1998. No reason is known for his long absence, but caprice may be a factor.
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has given $275,000 to classical and jazz composer Wayne Horvitz.
Out of the blue.
Free to do with as he pleases.
Barabara Haveman jumped in last night at La Scala in the opening of Robert Carsen’s new production of Fanciulla del West, conducted by Riccardo Chailly.
She replaced her fellow-Dutch soprano Eva Maria Westbroek, who is unwell.
The show received a 9-minute ovation and very few boos. This may have been Haveman’s Scala debut.
In Vienna, Alexandra LoBianco messaged: ‘What did I just do tonight….oh wow, what a night.’
The young American replaced Anne Schwanewilms as Leonore in Fidelio.
It’s a good time for singers to stay close to their phones.
Jed Bernstein’s abrupt departure from Lincoln Center was initially spun as a personality clash between him and the board chair, Katherine G. Farley.
Now the Center’s crisis-management team have informed the New York Times that Jed, 61, was having an affair with a woman in her 30s who was on his staff.
‘Mr. Bernstein had violated Lincoln Center human resources policy by not disclosing a personal relationship with an employee,’ it has been stated.
Could be it’s a bit of both.
Sonya Yoncheva will open the 2016-17 Covent Garden season as Norma, instead of Anna Netrebko.
Sondra Radvanovsky will replace Netrebko at the Met opening of 2017-18.
Sondra says: Well, the cat is out of the bag….I will be singing the new production and opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2017-2018 season in NORMA! YEAHHH! So happy to be working with Sir David McVicar again as well as Joseph Calleja and Joyce Di Donato! Hugs, Sondra
Sonya is Bulgarian. Sondra is American.
All sorts of other ways to tell them apart.
China National Opera has named Yang Yang, 43, as its next music director.
He succeeds Yu Feng, who is now Rector of the Central Conservatory of Music.
Yang Yang… that shouldn’t be hard to remember.
Ankara, today. The frontline of European democracy.
Macleans Magazine has just gone online with as much smut as it can muster on the rampaging divorce case between heiress and singer Eleanor McCain and former Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) president Jeff Melanson.
We know you’re not interested in smut. Those who are may click this link for the full story.
As far as the musical impact is concerned, these two paragraphs sum it up rather well:
One arts insider is aghast: “It’s damaging to Jeff, it’s damaging to the TSO, it’s damaging to the Canadian arts community and it’s damaging to the McCain family. It’s a train wreck.” Lawyers are chattering: one shudders at “the abuse of the legal system to try to ruin someone’s career.”
But the combatants also represent the extremes of the insular Canadian art world—buyer and seller, donor and visionary—and at least some of what’s wrong with it. If McCain bought her way into the arts scene, “[losing] money on her ‘artistic’ endeavours,” as her estranged husband alleges in his claim that she “buys opportunities for herself and loses money on her ‘artistic’ endeavours’,” Melanson sold his way in: catapulting to celebrity status, particularly among the philanthropic elite, with a compelling, marketable vision of how the arts enrich communities, nations and economies. Such was Melanson’s charisma and celebrity that this is a world in which the hare, not the tortoise, gets the spotlight even if he doesn’t finish the race. It’s seldom acknowledged that his near-$1-billion plan for the Banff Centre was abandoned 2½ years in, and his epic $166.4-million plan for the money-losing TSO to build a recording studio and media lab went unquestioned publicly.
The Metropolitan Opera has released Sonya Yoncheva from La Bohème to sing Norma in London in September, in place of Anna Netrebko who says her voice is unsuited to the role.
ROH Director of Opera Kasper Holten: ‘A huge thank you to the Met for releasing the brilliant soprano Sonya Yoncheva from her scheduled performances there as Mimì in La bohème. They have announced today that Ailyn Pérez will sing Mimì for them in the autumn. We are delighted and appreciative that Sonya will be able to join our excellent cast and creative team for The Royal Opera’s new production of Norma. She has had much success at the Royal Opera House in recent Seasons and we look forward to welcoming her back in the autumn for Norma and as Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann.’
UPDATE: Sondra Radvanovsky will replace Anna at the Met.
The $25k career boosters go to:
Christopher Allen, Associate Conductor, Los Angeles Opera;
Gene Chang, Assistant Conductor, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director, Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra;
Ankush Kumar Bahl, Assistant Conductor, National Symphony Orchestra;
Joshua Gersen, Assistant Conductor, New York Philharmonic, and Music Director, New York Youth Symphony;
Daniel Black, Assistant Conductor, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra;
Keitaro Harada, Associate Conductor, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor, Arizona Opera, and Associate Conductor, Richmond (VA) Symphony Orchestra;
Yaniv Dinur, Assistant Conductor, The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra;
Stefano Sarzani, Associate Conductor, Des Moines Metro Opera;
Stilian Kirov, Music Director, Symphony in C (Philadelphia, PA), and Music Director, Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra;
Michelle Merrill, Assistant Conductor, Detroit Symphony Orchestra;
and Sameer Patel, Assistant Conductor, The San Diego Symphony Orchestra.
Past winners include Karina Canellakis, Cristian Macelaru and Anthony Barrese.
Garsington Opera will live-screen Eugene Onegin this summer on the following sites:
SKEGNESS Saturday 2 July 12.30pm Tower Esplanade SO Festival
RAMSGATE 25 – 30 July Ramsgate Beach, Ramsgate Arts Festival
BRIDGEWATER & BURNHAM Saturday 20 August APEX Park, Burnham-on-Sea
GRIMSBY Friday 30 September 7pm Grimsby Central Hall
Cool!
