The 2018/19 season:

Christof Loy will direct Verdi’s La forza del destino with Anna Netrebko and Liudmyla Monastyrska alternating as Leonora, and Jonas Kaufmann and Yusif Eyvazov as Don Alvaro.

Stefan Herheim directs Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades  with Aleksandrs Antonenko and Eva-Maria Westbroek.

Richard Jones’ Katya Kabanova will star Amanda Majeski while Deborah Warner’s Billy Budd features Jacques Imbrailo and Toby Spence.

There is also a new Humperdinck Hansel and Gretel.

 

press release:

On 22 April audiences around the world will be able to watch the performance of James MacMillan’s Stabat mater from the Sistine Chapel as it becomes the first ever concert live-streamed from the Vatican….

The much-lauded choral setting by Sir James MacMillan of the Stabat mater, was commissioned by the Genesis Foundation for Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. This world renowned choir will be joined by Britten Sinfonia, as they were at the work’s world premiere in October 2016 at London’s Barbican Centre, in a continuation of the ensemble’s close relationship with the Genesis Foundation and MacMillan. Greeted with a standing ovation at the Barbican, the 55-minute work has since been hailed repeatedly as a masterpiece. A recording, released on The Sixteen’s own label, CORO, was shortlisted for a 2017 Gramophone Award.

 

Matthew Bourne’s company has announced the death of Scott Ambler, a formidable dancer who played The Prince in the original production of Swan Lake.

 

 

The veteran conductor tells an audience that he follows Fritz Reiner in giving extremely small gestures to let the orchestra find its own musicality.

But, says Blomstedt, Reiner (r.) tolerated neither humour nor dissent.

 

Listen here. 

Blomstedt is an incredible raconteur.

 

The market town of Aylesbury, where Bowie played his tentative first gigs in 1971, is putting up a statue to him this weekend.

A petition is being presented to the council to rename the town Aylesbowie.

 

 

Founder-conductor of the Florida Orchestra and long-serving head of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Costa Rica, Irwin Hoffman is no more, his wife has announced.

Tributes will be paid today in the national theatre of Costa Rica.

A Koussevitsky student at Tanglewood, Irwin Hoffman was music director of the Vancouver Symphony from 1952 to 1964 before heading further afield to lead orchestras in Colombia and Chile.

His son is the virtuoso cellist Gary Hoffman. His daughter Deborah was principal harp of the Metropolitan Opera until her early death in 2014.

He is survived also by his second wife, the Costa Rica violinist Lourdes Lobo.

 

The Swedish arts world is in shock over the death of Benny Fredriksson, 58, former head of the Stockholm state theatre. The theatre, in a public statement, announced that he took his own life.

Fredriksson, who was married to the international mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, resigned last December after 16 years, under pressure from ferocious media criticism of his leadership style based on varied complaints by 40 staff members.

The theatre, in its public statement, links his tragic death to the media campaign.

Swedish journalists are urgently searching their consciences.

In her Living the Classical Life interview today, Joyce DiDonato recalled the vocal expert in London who, 20 years ago, told her that she had nothing to offer as an artist.

She politely refrained from naming the man.

But we know who he is, and where he lives.

He was then, and is still now, considered an authority on the singing voice.

He sits on commissions and competition juries. And he tells young people ‘you have nothing to say as an artist.’

Classical music nurtures such negative spirits.

It’s time we kept them away from contact with young people.

Joyce survived the treatment. Many others did not.

See what she has to say.

The staging is by the company’s artistic director, Daniel Kramer, and it’s a test of his fitness for purpose.

 

Rupert Christiansen in the Telegraph:  Kramer hasn’t fully engaged with Verdi’s emotional drama…. The central confrontation between Germont père and Violetta has no intensity or poignancy, and is stiffly acted. We never sense that Violetta is doomed from the start, or that Germont represents a repressive patriarchy, or that Alfredo is a nice innocent who has strayed over the tracks.

Neil Fisher in the Times: … a disappointing, neutered evening.

George Hall, The Stage: …  a crudely conceived, woefully misguided production.

David Nice, theartsdesk: …This Traviata as travesty isn’t good enough and makes fools of its singers. 

Nick Kimberley, ES: … it all feels contrived, every garish detail underlined. By contrast, the next act, where Violetta and Alfredo find refuge in a country idyll, is unfocused, the singers cast adrift. 

Erica Jeal, the Guardian: …given that Kramer’s ideas include Alfredo doing a cringeworthy puppy impression every time he and Violetta get amorous, I doubt Olivier himself could have made this version of the character work.

 

photo: Catherine Ashmore/ENO

 

London, Euston:

The Swedish mezzo is flying home from Australia after the sudden death of her husband, the distinguished Swedish theatre director, Benny Fredriksson.

Benny died on Saturday, aged 58. The couple, who had been married since 1989, had spent time together with other members of the family in New Zealand ahead of concert performances in Sydney and Adelaide.

Benny Fredriksson was head of the Stockholm state theatre for 16 years until his resignation at the end of last year after press criticism of his attitudes at work. His death on Saturday was announced by the theatre.

A statement has been issued on behalf of Ms von Otter: ‘The family is crushed by the loss of their beloved husband, father and grandfather and asks for their privacy to be respected.’

Our thoughts are with them.

UPDATE: Theatre says it was suicide.

Mstislav Rostropovich was 19 when he gave cello lessons to a girl from his high school class, Alla Vasilieva.

She went on to work as his assistant at the Moscow Conservatoire.

He entered her for the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition but she withdrew, condemning the ‘musical marathon’ aspects of public contests.

She had a good solo career, mostly in the Soviet Union, working with such conductors as Rudolph Barshay, Yuri Ahronovich, Yuri Simonov and Pavel Kogan.

She mostly taught at the Moscow State University, named after Maimonides.

Alla died in Moscow at the weekend, aged 84.