Just when you thought you were safe from the soi-disant opera singer – it’s seven months since her last Slipped Disc appearance – we’ve been hit by a wave of links to her TV account of David Bowie’s Heroes.

Now KJ has never said she’s an opera singer. Nor has she ever corrected mass media that describe her as such.

But one thing’s sure: no properly trained opera singer would ever go up an octave this way.

The Opéra de Paris has posted the following notice:

Due to illness, Anna Netrebko will not be performing the role of Violetta Valéry in La Traviata on Wednesday 21, Sunday 25 and Wednesday 28 February. The role will be performed by Marina Rebeka.  

 

This is the jury at the Reine Elisabeth competition in 1959.

No points for recognising Menuhin (3rd left) and Oistrakh (3rd right).

But who are the others?

(right click on picture and open image in new tab to enlarge)

Jody Ellis co-founded the Santa Fe Community Orchestra in 1982.

Almost up to her death last week, she was still turning up in the cello section.

 

Read on here.

If you check in a guitar with Japan Airline, this is what you’ll get.

It’s a huge gesture in the right direction.

They are trialling the case with guitars. Let’s demand an upgrade for cellos.

 

 

The French strings world is in mourning for Didier Lockwood, a household name both as a jazz violinist and as a campaigner for music education.

He suffered a heart attack early Sunday morning, after performing that evening at Bal Blomet.

A disciple of Stéphane Grappelli, Lockwood, who was half-Scottish, set up his own school for improvisation near Paris and was a vastly popular performer. Crossing all genres and with immense charm, he exercised a widespread and wholly benign influence on French music and society.

He is mourned by his wife, the opera soprano Patricia Petibon, and three children.

President Macron tweeted: Hommage ému au violoniste Didier Lockwood, ami et partenaire des plus grands, aussi soucieux de nouer le fil entre les cultures que de transmettre au plus grand nombre. Son rayonnement, son ouverture d’esprit et son immense talent musical nous manqueront.

The classical violinist Renaud Capucon writes: Quelle tristesse d’apprendre le départ de l’incomparable violoniste de jazz Didier Lockwood. La France perd un musicien d’exception,un homme aux qualités rares. Il nous manquera énormément. Affection pour sa famille et ses proches. Et profond respect.

Seven women have now come forward with allegations against Richard Buckley, who was fired as music director of Austin Opera at the start of this month.

The litany of complaints include:  touching women’s buttocks, making sexual comments about their bodies, making crass jokes and giving unsought massages.

Buckley has issued this apology: ‘These accusations are very serious and upsetting. I ask for excellence from myself and everyone I work with, and at times use humour to release pressure and defuse tension. If I have ever said or done anything that has offended anyone or made them feel uncomfortable, I deeply apologise.’

He had been music director in Austin for 15 years.

 

 

The state collecting agency GEMA has just announced candidates for the 2018 Musikautorenpreis.

On a longlist of 20, there is just one woman.

And the jury is, of course, all-male.

Well done, Gema.

 

 

 

About 30 years ago I broke the story in the Sunday Times of a major find in the Covent Garden basement – an opera by Donizetti called Elisabetta.

There was much fuss, huffing and puffing, and a promise to stage the piece as soon as possible.

It finally got a concert performance in 1998, followed by a recording, and that was the end of the matter.

Today, the Observer reports the discovery of another Donizetti masterpiece, lost for 180 years, the Angel of Nisida.

Same old, same old?

 

Friday night’s performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko at the Slovak National Opera was called off at the last minute with no explanation offered to the audience.

But these things tend to leak out.

Apparently, singers complained of mould growing over parts of the set.

Health-and-safety were called in. Samples were taken and sent to the lab. Results will take a few days to arrive.

Meantime, speculation is rife. It could be any of these:

a penicillin

b marijuana

c seafood

d remnants of the Slovak national dish from the previous week’s menu

e a Russian mafia plot…

 

Paul Pelkonen has attended the first New York performance in 38 years of Music With Changing Parts.

From his review:

This was the New York premiere of the revised version of Mr. Glass’ score, a work that was written  five years before Glass and Robert Wilson detonated Einstein on the Beach. It stands alone in the vast Glass catalogue. Its uniqueness is in that it allows its performers some leeway for improvisation, and its length in performance can range between sixty and ninety minutes. (Friday night’s performance ran just over an hour and a half.)

Although there was room for improvisation, the three groups onstage (the Philip Glass Ensemble, the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus and students from the San Fransisco Conservatory of Music) were still confined to the trademark Glass technique of small melodic cells, built rapidly atop each other to generate its vast structure. The technique results in something with the size and weight of Stonehenge, if that monument were made from grains of sand….

Read on here.

 

Rumbles of discontent have reached us from Festival Next Generation in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.

The festival is run by Drazen Domjanic of Liechtenstein, who is also founder of its resident orchestra, the Ensemble Esperanza.

So far, so music biz.

But the players were unhappy to discover that the artist in residence is none other than Sara Domjanic, the founder’s daughter. She gets to play the Mendelssohn violin concerto, the Piazzolla Four Seasons and Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, as well as leading the Mendelssohn Octet and other chamber works.

The festival, to its credit, introduces other young artists as well, but none gets the prominence of Ms Domjanic.

One ensemble player tells Slipped Disc: ‘Many of us young musicians in the orchestra feel betrayed, as the idea of the orchestra is not to accompany exclusively the daughter of our director.’