Miguel Harth-Bedoya is leaving Texas.

He says: ‘I am so proud of the work the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and I have done together over the last nearly two decades. These years with the FWSO have touched and changed me deeply. Working together with the orchestra toward higher and higher artistic levels – even through the challenges – has been profoundly rewarding. Our musicians’ extraordinary playing constantly inspires me, and because of them I have become a better conductor. Our recent success on an international stage at the Kennedy Center, like our Carnegie Hall performance a decade ago, is a testament to our relevance as an outstanding American orchestra.’

The challenges have been plentiful and seem to be growing.

The orchestra has been without a chief executive for a year. Last month, the interim manager walked away.

The orchestra is in friction with its hall management.

 

This might be the best offer you get all week: would you like to win one of these?

The complete Birgit Nilsson on Decca.

That’s 79 CDs and 2 DVDs, including 27 complete operas.

Her 100th birthday falls next Thursday.

All you need to do to have a chance of winning a box is to answer these questions correctly. All of them. First reader with all the right answers gets the box.

Here’s the quiz:

1 What is the earliest extant recording of BN?

2 Which conductor did BN infamously have a disagreement with over the lighting design during a rehearsal of Wagner’s Ring?

3 With the exception of three roles, BN first performed all of her roles in Stockholm (and usually in Swedish). What are the roles and where did she perform them?

4 BN made her MET debut 18 December 1959 as Isolde. The second performance had three different Tristans – who were they?

5 According to opera gossip columns, which famous tenor decided to exact revenge by biting Birgit instead of kissing her during their love scene in the third act of Turandot after losing a battle of the high Cs with Birgit in the previous act?

6 Which country featured BN as Turandot on a postage stamp?

7 When did Birgit Nilsson (BN) marry Bertil Niklasson?

8 What was the name of BN’s beloved St. Bernard?

Answers, please, by email to: norman@normanlebrecht.com

Good luck!

The winner will be announced on Slipped Disc on Birgit’s birthday.

The Bernstein industry has told Variety that ‘A Star Is Born’ star Bradley Cooper will direct and play the lead in a Lenny biopic financed by Paramount Pictures and Amblin Entertainment and scripted by Josh Singer. Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Fred Berner, Amy Durning, and Kristie Macosko Krieger will co-produce.

They willl face competition from another Bernstein film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and called ‘The American.’

Some poor critics will have to watch both.

 

Friends are reporting the sad death of Vincenzo Manno, a Cleveland tenor who became a member of La Scala’s permanent cast until his retirement nine years ago.

He was in great demand as a teacher.

Many called him ‘Maestro’.

The German conductor Kevin John Edusei  has told the Swiss town of Berne that he won’t renew his contract beyond 2019.

Edusei, 41, cites family reasons and the urge to spend more time with his other orchestra, in Munich.

 

Hard to believe, but no Pole has ever walked the stage of the Wagner festival.

The first, this summer, will be Tomasz Konieczny.

He will sing Teleramund in Yuval Sharon’s new production of Lohengrin, conducted by Christian Thielemann.

Imagine maintaining a Polish boycott all these years…. Well, that’s Bayreuth, still living in blinkers.

 

Jonathan Sternberg, one of the founders of the Conductors Guild in 1974, died in Philadelphia on May 8, at the age of 98.

A gregarious man who wore his great knowledge lightly, Jonathan conducted in Shanghai while in the US Army in 1946 and went on to perform and record with various ensembles in Vienna, working closely with the Haydn scholar H C Robbins Landon. Among his soloists were Yehudi Menuhin, Henryk Szeryng, Alfred Brendel, Annie Fischer, Maurice Gendron, Lisa Della Casa, Hilde Gueden and George London.

He was associated with the Halifax Symphony Orchestra (1957-1958), the Royal Flemish Opera (1963-1966), the Harkness Ballet of New York (1966-1968), and the Atlanta Opera Company (1968-1969). Later on, he taught at Rochester and Philadelphia.

Boston Lyric Opera is planning to stage The Handmaid’s Tale, Poul Ruders’ opera on Margaret Atwood’s novel of female servitude.

The venue it has chosen is Lavietes Pavilion at Harvard Athletics Complex,  the world’s second-oldest college basketball court. “

‘We found a space that reflects the proportions and ambitions of this work and brings it home – in a sense – to some locations dramatized in Ms. Atwood’s original book,’ says BLO boss Esther Nelson.

 

From a press release:

Jess Gillam, 19, has signed an exclusive recording deal with Decca Classics – becoming the first saxophone player to join the historic label. She will enter the recording studio for Decca for the first time later this year.

Hailing from Ulverston in Cumbria, Jess first caught the public eye during BBC Young Musician 2016 when, at the age of 17, she was the first saxophonist to reach the final of the competition – wowing audiences with her performance of Michael Nyman’s Where the Bee Dances.

photo: Dominic Nichols

The Curtis Institute has hired Eric Owens as joint head of its opera department.

He will share duties with vocal choach Danielle Orlando.

The new team take over from Mikael Eliasen, who has held the post for 30 years.

 

 

The Hungarian soloist Máté Szűcs will succeed Nobko Imai in September as professor at the Conservatory of Geneva.

That leaves a vacancy for #1 viola in the Berlin Phil.

 

The death is reported of Lise Rollan, a Belgian light soprano who made her name in the lighter stuff.

She was 95.

Anyone recognise the harpsichordist?