Election day services at  Hamburg’s St. Michaeliskirche contained music by the composers Gustav Adolf Merkel (1827-1885) and Johann Abraham Schulz (1747-1800).

The Australian soprano Greta Bradman, granddaughter of the great cricketer, has joined Patrick Togher Artists’ Management, whose offices are in  Surry Hills, Sydney – next door to Opera Australia.

The Birmingham Conservatoire has been granted a Royal title, Julian lloyd Webber has announced.

He adds: ‘This follows our announcement last year of HRH Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, as our first Royal Patron.’

Smart piece of lobbying. The test is in the teaching.

Opera Nostalgia reports the death of Tsisana Tatishvili, a stalwart of Georgia State Opera and a frequent soloist in European opera houses.

The federal government has put the national opera company on notice that it is expected to engage ‘an appropriate balance’ of Australian talent, or face a fine of up to $200,000.

It has been reported that OA hired three times as many foreigners last season, a total of 29. Details here.

A similar measure ought to be considered at English National Opera.

In his refreshingly candid new book, Leading Tones (Amadeus Press), the leading US conductor has a go at inaccurate reporting on the the New York Times.

After an unhappy La Traviata at the Met in March 2010, Anthony Tommasini, the Times chief music critic, irritated the conductor by reporting: ‘The problem was that the conductor Leonard Slatkin, appearing at the Met for the first time in 12 years, showed up at rehearsals not fully knowing the score. You did not have to believe the reports that spread on opera chat lines to know this. Mr Slatkin conceded as much on his personal Web site, leonardslatkin.com.’

Slatkin says he conceded nothing of the sort. He now responds: ‘Opera chat lines? Tommasini had admittedly relied on anonymous bloggers for some of his information, not the best idea. Both he and the blogger got the facts wrong. I knew the score intimately and could have conducted it from memory. And nowhere on my blog did I say, or mean to imply, that I did not know the score.’

Unfortunately Slatkin’s current website does not go back as far as 2010. Slatkin alleges collusion between certain writers on the Times and a colourful opera blogger. He may not be far wrong.

Read the book. There are several more correctives to received media wisdom.

In this week’s Spectator, I write about the progressive emasculation of the music director.

Sample:

‘I would never let a music director tell me which soloists to hire,’ a US orchestra president assures me. ‘Nor would I accept his preferred guest conductors.’ Patronage used to be a maestro’s perk, giving old codgers access to young talent that some would shamefully abuse. Loss of patronage has all but disabled the role. Except for Muti in Chicago and Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera it is hard to name a musical institution today where the dominant voice belongs to the music director…

So what, exactly, can Rattle hope to achieve at the LSO? He has told friends he would like to see some changes in personnel, but hiring and firing are entirely in the players’ hands. All the music director can do is nudge and wink to his supporters and hope for a desired outcome. Rattle opened the season with a programme of all English composers, most of them living, but he won’t be allowed to push programming any further than the box office will bear — and it won’t bear more than one such eye-catcher per season….

Read on here.

Janelle Gelfand left the Cincinnati Enquirer last week after 26 years.

No reason given. Presumably the usual newspaper cutbacks. No word of a replacement, either.

Janelle has been a faithful magnifying glass on the arts in her city.

She delivers a graceful farewell, here. 

‘It’s been a privilege,’ she signs off.

If one thing is certain it is that we will never see or hear his like again.

The National Orchestra of Spain has announced the death of Victor Martín, its concertmaster from 1977 to 2001.

French born, Victor Martin was first violin of the Boccherini Quintet in Rome and founder of the Cassado Quartet. He kick-started the New Music Society in Toronto and the Spanish Chamber Orchestra.

He was professor at the the University of Toronto and, from 1980, at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid.

The trial has opened at Nagoya District Court of a Chinese woman who is accused of destroying 54 of her Norwegian husband’s precious violins and 70 bows.

Qin Yue, 35, is alleged to have threatened her estranged luthier husband that she would ‘destroy the violins if he did not pay’ for the upkeep of their two children.

The luthier’s name is being withheld in court proceedings.

The damage is estimated at $140,000, a much lower sum that previously claimed.

From the new Lebrecht Album of the Week:

When Pierre Boulez became music director of the New York Philharmonic in the 1970s, he refused to conduct Mozart, inserting Haydn instead. It did no good for Haydn. The Mozart lovers deserted in droves, while the cerebral types that Boulez hoped to attract were dismayed to find just as much frivolity in Papa Haydn as in the ‘trivial’ Amadeus. Haydn’s reputation has taken years to recover.

The instant appeal of this recording is that…

Read on here.

And here.