The first black singer to appear at Bayreuth, Grace Bumbry has blazed trails of glory across the opera world for more than half a century.

 

She made her debut in Paris in 1960 as Amneris. Wieland Wagner cast her as Venus in Tannhäuser in summer 1961. Jackie Kennedy summoned her to sing at the White House. Vienna upgraded her to soprano in Verdi’s Macbeth.

She made a much-belated Met debut as Tosca in 1971, together with conductor James Levine, also on debut.

In in 2013, she sang the Countess at the Vienna State Opera in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame.

Happy  birthday, amazing Grace.

This time there was no-one being hustled to the door gagged by lawyers, as there was with Andrew S. Grossman.

 

Margaret Selby, president of Cami Spectrum and a company veteran for 20 years, was quietly terminated over the holiday break. All references have been removed from the website. She never existed. A curt press release was issued after business hours on Christmas Eve. No reason was given.

Selby was in charge of dance at the mega-agency, representing many choreographers, among them Jessica Lang, Moses Pendleton and Alonzo King. She was a personal protégée of the late Ronald Wilford and she ran her part of the business behind closed doors. Like Grossman, she made good money but not many friends.

 

Further departures are expected. It looks like the world’s biggest classical agency is reinventing itself as a boutique.

 

Bild reports that talks to renew the conductor’s contract have stalled over a small but stubborn issue.

Thielemann is demanding more days off on tour. The Dresden Staatskapelle management say he already has more free days than his predecessors.

Thielemann, 57, has bestowed star status on the ancient but long-marginalised orchestra since he joined in 2012. His televised New Year’s concert reached 980,000 ZDF viewers, though this represents a dip on past peak years.

He would have left Dresden soonerhad he won the election to the Berlin Philharmonic last year.

Special dispatch from the German-based Brazilian opera tenor Ewandro Stenzowski:

 

 

In the last 34 years, my home town Curitiba annually hosted a successful international music festival, which mixed traditional concert music and popular/new ways of music making, being an important vector to the creativity of different tastes and ideas. Besides its obvious value to the cultural scene of Brazil’s eighth biggest city, this Festival has also a very important role on the education and training of young musicians from all Latin America.

A close cooperation with the Paraná’s Federal University helped to give extensive education to young professionals. Hundreds of successful artists could start their careers through the festival, getting specialist advice from established musicians and pedagogues. There is also an intrinsic economical value, with many concerts simultaneously occurring in different parts of city, stimulating tourism during a dull time of year. The Festival is secured since 2012 by a specific Law, and the 2017 edition is part of the text of the budgetary Laws annually approved by the City Council, and represents 0.019% of the Curitiba’s total expenditure planned for the this year.

After winning the elections, but before assuming the position, the elected city Mayor, Mr. Rafael Greca de Macedo, decided to cancel the event, justifying it with the argument that “he did not have enough information about the economical situation of the city”. Still in charge, the now former Mayor, Gustavo Fruet, showed that a part of the resources were already spent on the pre-production of the event, and, that from the economical point of view there was no reason not to proceed with the event. Mr. Greca de Macedo decided to cancel the event anyway, with the argument that this money would increase the resources for the Healthcare System in the city. His statements about the topic compared music to “bier”. “What is more important? To buy a child some medicine, or to drink some bier?”. For the record, the Festival represents 0,1% of the city’s healthcare budget.

Mr. Greca de Macedo comes from a very traditional and rich family from the state of Paraná. He was already on office once, in the 90’s. The State of Paraná and the City of Curitiba are almost exclusively run by his political lineage. During the campaign, last year, he was accused of being “elitist”, after stating that he almost “threw up” after “smelling a poor” person. Not here to argue about the context of this sentence, this had a negative impact on his image. The political representation in Brazil goes through a complicated crisis, and the number of valid votes from the second Round of the municipal elections was lower than the not valid ones. So, even winning the elections, it is not possible to say that Mr. Greca de Macedo enjoys great popularity.

Even taking in consideration that those Festival’s resources are much lower than the budget for 24 hours of Curitiba’s healthcare system, the idea gave him a considerable raise of popularity. The musical community acted fast, and tried to articulate negotiations with the elected mayor and tried to ask detailed explanations of the problem, trying to work together with Mr. Greca de Macedo, whose position was intransigent, and not opened to dialogue. It is hard to estimate how is the damage to the public image of the artistic directors and managers of this event, but, historically, the damage is already done. The Oficina Internacional de Música de Curitiba has been hurt in a way that also exposes the fragility of Brazilian culture institutions.

 

 

‘Guten Tag,’ apparently.

‘Hi’ does not go down well.

More winning tips here from Leipzig Gewandhaus timpanist Tom Greenleaves.

See also: How to win a German audition.

 

The Théatre du Châtelet has named Ruth Mackenzie as its next artistic director, succeeding Jean-Luc Choplin.

Ruth, 59, is presently head of the Holland Festival, a job she began just two years ago.

She was previously head of the London 2012 Olympic festival and, before that, worked in the UK Department of Culture as advisor to two Labour secretaries of state. She started out as head of Scottish Opera.

The Châtelet will be shut for the next two years for refurbishment.

The Dutch will be displeased.

 

Haaretz music critic Amir Mandel adds a few more candidates for the Israel Philharmonic vacancy, warning that the orchestra is in need of an energy jolt and in danger of repertoire atrophy.

Among the maestros best liked by the players, writes Amir, are: Antonio Pappano, Pablo Heras-Casado, Manfred Honeck, Vladimir Jurowski and both Petrenkos, Kirill and Vasily (pic).

More here.

Conductor brothers Adam (l.) and Ivan Fischer met unexpectedly backstage this weekend at Müpa Budapest.

Ádám Fischer conducted Haydn’s Creation in the 2017 New Year’s Concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Purcell Choir.

The Czech Philharmonic has renewed Jiří Bělohlávek as music director for a further six years,.

Jiří, 70, has been in charge since 2012, slowly restoring the orchestra’s international and recording profile.

It is his second spell as music director. He was elected by the players in 1990, after the fall of communism, only to be voted out a year later in favour of a German carpetbagger bearing fictional record contracts.  Jiří went on to found the rival Prague Philharmonia.

The violinist Betty-Jean Hagen died on December 27, 2016 in Poughkeepsie, New York, at the age of 86.

She won the 1955 Leventritt Competition, earning concerto dates with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony. In Europe she played with the Concertgebouw, the London Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de la Suisse romande.

Canadian born, she went on to teach at Vassar, marrying Vincent Greicius, a violinist in the Met orchestra.

NBC’s Today ran a five-minute segment on Joyce DiDonato’s work with longterm prisoners.

Watch. Feed the hope.

 

Joyce says: ‘I consider this to be some of the most significant work I have ever taken part in. Please share this with anyone who questions the power of music (and yes, opera) to transform lives.’

The Turkish tenor Mert Sungu has walked out of Bologna’s upcoming production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

He accused the director Martin Kusej of causing a ‘blemish to the dignity of a nation’, and misleading the audience’s ‘understanding of geo-political causes of our biggest problem today: TERRORISM.’

Bologna has made no comment on his departure, which was announced on social media a matter of hours before the New Year’s Day attack on an Istanbul nightclub.

Sungu, 31 and from Istanbul, works mostly in Italian opera houses.

Italian media have failed to report his action.