The mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier is back in Bayreuth for the first time this century

‘It uses to feel like family,’ she says. ‘In the canteen there used to be a corner where artists played cards. All gone now.

‘Everything is more cordoned off than it used to be. You can’t just drop in to an orchestra rehearsal like you used to.’

Meier, 62, was banned from Bayreuth after a falling-out with Wolfgang Wagner. She says her comeback after 18 years – as Ortrud in Lohengrin – will also be her farewell.

Don’t ever say it can’t be done.

The dancer and choreographer Ophélie Longuet has died after a heavy-vehicle crash on the A7 near Avignon.

Ophélie was 41.

Two other people died, one of them a pregnant woman.

Ophélie’s partner, Konstantin Noroslov, was injured.

Just in from South Florida Classical Review:

Susan Danis is leaving Florida Grand Opera after six years as CEO and executive director.

In October Danis will become CEO and president of the La Jolla Music Society and the Conrad Presbys Performing Arts Center in San Diego.

Why, you wonder?

Despite the artistic triumphs, Danis couldn’t overcome FGO’s continuing issues of shaky finances and a declining audience base in Miami. (The company continues to be hobbled by a lingering deficit, currently estimated at $3.5 million.)

She also had to deal with the backstage intrigue of competing agendas, internal factions and backstabbing by those set on undermining her authority, which seem an inevitable part of presenting opera in Miami.

Read on here.

The Stage has the exclusive on this:

Charles Castronovo saved (Friday night’s) performance of La Boheme at the Royal Opera House starring his wife Ekaterina Siurina, when he stepped in mid-show to sing the role of her lover.

Siurina was playing the lead role of Mimi, alongside Atalla Ayan as her lover Rodolfo.

When a problem with Avan’s voice forced him to stop singing, Castronovo, who had been watching from the audience, stood in and sang the role at the side of the stage, while Ayan acted it….

Read on here.

 

An distinguished figure at the State University of New York has been reprimanded for voicing an opinion that rap is not ‘real music.’

Gerald Benjamin, director of the Benjamin Center (which is named after him) on SUNY’s New Paltz campus, told the New York Times, ‘People like us, people in rural New York, we are not people who respond to this part of American culture.’ The Times quoted him as saying he did not consider rap to be ‘real music’ and whipped up a little media storm.

This drew an swift rebuke from SUNY:

And an apology from poor old Dr Benjamin:

‘I have worked at SUNY New Paltz for fifty years in several capacities, and have a deep attachment to the school and the diverse community we have built here… I am therefore very sorry for any unintended distress caused by my remarks…. These remarks have been condemned as racist. I had no racist intent but understand the impact of those remarks, and regret having made them..’

So much for academic freedom of speech.

 

 

Dr Victoria N. Bateman is a Cambridge academic, specialising in macroeconomics and British economic history. She is a fellow in economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

She speaks here about economics, the arts and feminism.

 

Dr Bateman has given a further interview here about why women object when she shows up naked for dinner.

Local intelligence* is reporting an influx of Prominenten at this year’s Salzburg Festival.

Prime among them is the British Prime Minister, who is looking for post-Brexit trade deals. We think she may be the first PM to attend the Salburg Festi since Margaret Thatcher, who used to insist on paying for her own tickets.

 

*h/t Richard Bratby

From the Mail on Sunday:

The Association of British Orchestras has warned that money-spinning EU tours by British orchestras could be hit. EU rules that stop musicians having tax and social security deducted from fees while abroad would end.

More than just money-spinning. They are talking survival. Without tours in EU countries, London orchestras will face insolvency.

 

Francois-Xavier Roth has tied the knot.

Stuart Skelton has proposed and been accepted.

Neither has declared yet to whom.

Congrats to all concerned.   

 

In a Bild interview, keeping up the Middle East rhetoric, the conductor admits a failure of his West-East Diwan Orchestra:

Es ist lang her, dass Sie mit dem Divan im Nahen Osten waren.

Barenboim: „Wir können nicht, die politische Situation erlaubt es nicht. Ich meine, wir könnten noch einmal nach Abu Dhabi fahren, das werden wir sicher auch tun. Aber Ägypten geht nicht, Israel geht nicht, Jordanien geht nicht, Palästina geht auch nicht. Das historische Konzert, das wir 2005 in Ramallah spielten, wäre heute undenkbar.“

It’s been a long time since you were with the Divan in the Middle East.

Barenboim:  We can’t, the political situation won’t allow it. I mean, we could go to Abu Dhabi again, we certainly will. But Egypt won’t work, Israel won’t, Jordan won’t, Palestine does not work either. The historic concert we played in Ramallah in 2005 would be unthinkable today. 

Read on here.

An interesting analogy in Der Tagesspiegel.

Katharina Wagner, after ten stormy years, simply bulldozes her way to survival. She’s not concerned about being liked. She just wants to keep her seat.

There is, however, one critical difference. Merkel is elected by public vote. Katie is a hereditary autocrat with no accountability or democratic legitimacy.

Read here.