We have been notified of the death on May 1st of Eliane Lublin, a star of the Opéra de Paris and the Monte Carlo Opera in the 1960s and beyond.
She was later artistic director of the Théâtre Européen de la Musique.
Breitbart News, mouthpiece of Trumpworld, reports that the proposed Congressional budget increases the budgets of both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, agencies that President Donald Trump planned to eliminate in his own budget proposal this year….
Additionally, the budget proposal would increase the budgets of both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by $2 million each, bringing their respective budgets to $150 million in total.
It looks as if lobbying Congress has saved arts grants, for the time being. But Breitbart suggests this was a compromise that was forced on the White House. Next time round, Trump will want total abolition.
The picture Breitbart uses was selected to show the NEA as decadent and useless. We won’t reprint it.
Universal Music has just upgraded Rebecca Allen from managing director to President of Decca UK.
Becks, who started out 17 years ago on the label’s press desk, has enjoyed a stunning run of recent success: Top 10 albums in quick succession with Ball & Boe, Dame Vera Lynn and Imelda May. Ball & Boe’s Together is now double platinum after becoming the UK’s Christmas number one album following its release in November 2016.
She runs like the wind, so long as it’s for charity.
What’s more, she says she has only just got started…
Go, Becks!
Several media outlets are reporting that the new President of France wanted to become a pianist. Some say he won awards.
We can find no trace of Macron playing the piano.
Does anyone have evidence?
UPDATE: According to Le Monde of
Boutique label Somm are bringing out 16 unpublished tracks by the British contralto Kathleen Ferrier.
These recordings are from two sources. Several are from the BBC’s own archives and include Ferrier’s first broadcast of Rubbra’s Three Psalms Op. 61, of which she was the dedicatee, five Schubert Lieder, four by Brahms and Parry’s Love is a bable, recorded at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival, which makes a delightful conclusion to the CD.
The other source is the remarkable collection of Kenneth Leech, a composer and engineer who, from the 1930s to the 1950s, recorded numerous broadcasts, mainly using Bakelite and metal discs – the usual way for an enthusiast to preserve radio programmes at that time. This collection is stored at the National Sound Archive in the British Library.
Out next month. Can’t wait.
The troubled post of music director of the Komische Oper Berlin has falled to the Latvian Ainars Rubikis, formerly music director in Novosibirsk until he got into trouble with a dissident Tannhäuser.
Rubikis, 39, won the Bamberg Mahler competition in 2010 and the Salzburg Nestlé award a year later.
The Komische orchestra had rejected the company‘s first-choice music director, Antonello Manacorda. Let’s hope they give Rubikis a warmer welcome.
From our morning …
… tweets: the Dutch baritone Bästiaan Everink, presently singing Marschner’s The Vampire at Theater Koblenz.
Bastiaan is a former combat soldier so be careful with your comments.
This one’s from Joseph Calleja.
l-r: Sonya Yoncheva, Diana Damrau, Kristine Opolais, Armiliato, Joyce DiDonato, Calleja, Pretty Yende
Any more?
Here’s one:
And another:
Rami was 21 when he fled Homs in 2015. He crossed eight countries to reach Germany and lost his violin on the way.
But suddenly he has hope.
Watch.
We have received reports of the death on April 15 of Dorothy Dorow, a formidable modernist who premiered works by Ligeti, Hene, Dallapiccola, Nono, Birtwistle, Madena, Boulez and others no less challenging.
She had retired to Cornwall after living for many years in the Netherlands.
photo: Marcello Mencarini / Lebrecht Music&Arts
The Vienna State Opera have announced that Angela Gheorghiu is sick for tomorrow night’s live-streamed Tosca.
She will be replaced by Martina Serafin, an Austrian stalwart.
photo: VPO/Pöhn
We have received the following statement on behalf of Karel Mark Chichon, music director of the radio orchestra in Saarland.
Following the recent news of the dramatic cuts that will affect the budget of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie in the future, today I have informed the Saarlandischer Rundfunk of my decision to resign from my position as Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, effective immediately.
I resign in protest and solidarity with the musicians of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, which I have had the honour to serve as their Chief Conductor since 2011.
It is culture and music in particular that defines the identity of a nation and its people and we cannot allow the progressive dismantling of the focus of artistic creation that is a Radio Symphony Orchestra. It is ironic that the German Culture Minister Monika Grütters has several times used her success in obtaining significant increases for culture from the Bundestag to insist that it should send “a political signal to cultural leaders in states and cities not to accept cuts in culture, even in financial difficult times”.
Culture is not a luxury – it is a necessity.
In resigning now I wish it to be known that I will suffer not only financial damages but potential personal ones in my final season with the DRP, regardless of the fact that my contract ends on 31 July 2017. Nevertheless I understand it is my moral duty to the musicians of this orchestra to make this gesture of protest. If those at the helm of cultural institutions do not take a firm stand again these corrosive policies that carry no logic, who will?
I take this opportunity to thank the musicians and staff of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie for some of the best music making years of my life. Together we have achieved great artistic success with concerts as well as recordings that I hope will be remembered for many years to come. Above all my thanks to the public we have served, who have always remained faithful to me and who have understood and appreciated the artistic transformation that was achieved during my years in Saarbrücken.
Your
Karel Mark Chichon, OBE FRAM
Chief Conductor, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie