The disinherited descendants of Richard Wagner have no right to run Bayreuth, a Bavarian district court has ruled.

The children of Wieland Wagner, led by the redoubtable Nike, had challenged the sole tenancy agreement for the festival theatre granted to their cousin Katharina, daughter of Wieland’s brother, Wolfgang.

The court decided that Katharina has sole rights to the theatre until 2040.

How much f this ruling is law and how simply German reverence for the holy grail and the status quo will take better lawyers than us to decide.

But anyone who thinks the matter is over knows nothing about the Wagners.

After ‘Yo-ho-to-ho’, the most popular line in the whole Wagner canon is ‘see you in court’.

The management of Camerata Nordica has finally informed its musicians that the orchestra has been suspended, after being shamed by reports in Slipped Disc.

Here’s what they wrote:
Dear Musicians,
The Board of Directors have decided to cancel the Camerata Nordica projects that were going to take place in February and March 2017. This has resulted in the fact that Terje Tönnesen has resigned from his position as artistic director for Camerata Nordica which means that the January project will not take place either. The Music Foundation deeply regrets the present situation and the consequences for you personally. We are sorry for this and send our deepest regards.
Kjell Lindström
General Manager

This served only to raise the levels of outrage among the musicians, who maintain that the artistic director qut only after the management failed to reply to a single email for more than six months.

Here’s the musicians’ response:

Dear PG, Kjell, and whomever else is reading this,

We hope you realise how incredibly unacceptable this email is. To not have signed our artistic director or given him a contract after 6 months of emails makes it literally impossible for you to in any way place the blame on him for anything as you are attempting to do now. There are a large number of musicians who have been booked to play 3 different projects in the new year, and to offer no explanation, no sign of compensation, and to have ignored our letters and those of our leaders so thoroughly for so long is both incredibly offensive to all of us and entirely unacceptable. Nor can you hide your financial mismanagement behind decisions that you pin on our Board of Directors.

Your actions towards our leadership and our musicians demonstrate a gross level of incompetence and mismanagement and will not be accepted by any of us. We remain open to dialogue to fix this situation, but until you are willing to take the responsibility for what you have done, until you and the Board stop trying to cover up your actions, it remains completely unclear to us as to how we can possibly move forward. 

As it stands now you are killing an orchestra that neither of you possess the ability to fix, and it is up to you to stop this now

Sincerely,

The Musicians of Camerata Nordica 

Viewers browsing the Paris Opéra website yesterday were able to read full plans – officially unannounced – for the 2017/18 season.

They include a Verdi Don Carlo, with Jonas Kaufmann, Sonya Yoncheva and Elīna Garanča; a Donizetti Don Pasquale with Pretty Yende et Lawrence Brownlee; and a Saariaho premiere staged by Peter Sellars.

As soon as the error was spotted the web page was instantly taken down.

But a blogger, David LeMarrec, cached up the season and publishes full details here.

The American Lawyer website introduces us to Marie-Joe Abi-Nassif, a mezzo-soprano who will give a voice-and-piano recital tomorrow night at Carnegie’s smaller Weill Hall.

Marie-Jo works in capital markets at Latham & Watkins while continuing her voice training at Juilliard.

Full story here.

A retired civil servant, Stephen Peover, has taken over as chairman of the Ulster Orchestra. He has let it be known that the orchestra has been assured of funding for another year, but there is no long-term financial commitment as yet.

His predecessor Sir George Bain told a public meeting that the orchestra ‘nearly did not’ survive the last financial cuts in its funding.

The bass-baritone, undergoing treatment for brain cancer, has confirmed his intention to appear this Sunday in a ‘Hvorostovsky and friends’ concert in St Petersburg.

It is the latest in a cycle of such concerts that he has put on since 2006 and his did not want to miss the tenth anniversary.

Hvorostovsky has further concerts scheduled the following week in Kransoyarsk and Ekaterinburg.

 

He may have been out for three months with a vocal cord injury, but the tenor’s Dolce Vita remains the top-selling classical release in Germany, and he has two other records in the top 20.

Dolce Vita is a compilation of syrupy, Italian desserts from the Andrea Bocelli songbook.

The Israeli luthier Amnon Weinstein, restorer of violins that survived the Holocaust death camps, has been awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz by foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

His project Violins of Hope has toured widely around the world.

The blind Italian crooner has agreed to sing one sing at the Presidential inauguration, according to TMZ.

It is further reported he may sing a duet with Jackie Evancho, with whom he has toured.

 

Cast members of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle have shot an episode at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, playing Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Times for about 100 inmates.

The work was conceived by Messiaen in 1940 when he was held in a prisoner of war camp.

It will give his music its widest-ever exposure when transmitted. The episode, known as “Not Yet Titled,” has also not yet been scheduled.

Full story here.

The players in Camerata Nordica have yet to be told officially that their orchestra has been suspended, and why. The website names two responsible officials: Peter Högberg. President. Kjell Lindstrom. County Music Manager. 

This morning, the musicians issued the following puzzled and regretful letter:

Wednesday, December 14th, 2016

To the Board and Administration of Camerata Nordica,

As members of Camerata Nordica it is simply impossible to imagine what could possibly have sparked your actions of the past week. At this moment we musicians are watching our orchestra crumble around us without a single comment from any of you on the meeting that took place last week or what precipitated the actions of which we have yet to be officially informed. As it stands now, this locally loved, nationally celebrated and internationally acclaimed ensemble is being blown up by a board and administration who show no respect towards its musicians who have devoted themselves to this ensemble through years of service, performing incredible productions and making internationally celebrated recordings.

On December 5th our February and March productions were cancelled without warning or justification. For the musicians who give their lives and careers to this orchestra this is a blatant violation of trust and creates an unworkable environment that no musician can be part of. As of today we have yet to be officially informed of the cancellation of these tours, and no justification or compensation has been offered. This gross negligence of management and communication is simply incomprehensible. A lack of management ability is not a reason to cancel productions and to do so without officially informing the musicians and without any dialogue whatsoever is indefensible.

On December 9th, Terje Tønnesen, our beloved artistic director and the visionary behind many of our most spectacular productions and acclaimed recordings resigned from his position. Shortly thereafter, Per Nyström, our principal cellist, the administrator responsible for our players, and the source of many if not all our great musicians and leaders over the last years, likewise resigned from his duties at Camerata Nordica. It must be clearly understood by the board and administration that these two individuals have been the driving force and the only reason for the success and acclaim of Camerata Nordica in the past decades.

To think that this orchestra can exist without either Terje or Per is to completely and fundamentally misunderstand what this orchestra is and how it evolved to be what it was until this week. The complete disappearance of the board and administration and their refusal to justify their actions or react to the resignation of their most important assets is impossible for any of us to understand.

We sincerely hope that these unwarranted decisions will be reversed immediately and that we can resume the hopeful path that has been years in the making.

Signed,

Willem Stam

Torbjörn Westman

Ulla Raukola

Guy Ben-Ziony

Barbro Lennstam

Mihkel Kerem

Sadie Fields

Eleonora Matsuno

Sophie Rosa

Brusk Zanganeh

Vashti Hunter

Catherine Bullock

Max Mandel

Daniel Bard

Simona Bonfiglioli

Dinara Mansurova

Abigail Fenna

Pål Solbakk

Sergej Bolkhovets

Claudia Ajmone-Marsan

Nikolay Shugaev

Jonian Ilias Kadesh

Natasa Grujic

Robert Mende