It’s all over, bar the paper shuffling.

In response to my column last week, the Universal Music Group issued a statement confirming that Decca’s crossover output will be absorbed into the parent company’s UCJ. It maintains that the label itself will remain ‘active’ and that London will continue to be its ‘creative centre’. It names this process ‘realignment’, which I shall promptly add to my growing lexicon of recession-era synonyms for corporate elimination.

The facts are simple. Without crossover, Decca is dead. Its pop side has been defunct for years and its few extant classical artists – Renee Fleming, Julia Fischer, Erwin Schrott – are being shunted over to Universal’s other property, Deutsche Grammophon. 

Conversations with staff members suggest that all that will remain is an office front, one desk-jockey without a budget and a PA to answer the phone. A helpful cross-poster from the classical music forum brightcecilia comes up with much the same conclusion.

The death of Decca may be inevitable in present economic circumstances and it is certainly very sad. But, by covering up with factoids, euphemisms and simulations of continuing life, the bonus-seekers at Universal merely sustain the corporate make-believe that brought Decca to its knees in the first place. Some day Universal’s head of classics and jazz will be called to account for demolishing a sub-culture by a thousand cuts over a dozen years. Maybe Georg Solti will come back to haunt the vandals from his Hungarian resting-place. Or Pavarotti’s ghost will rise to sit on them. He knows where they live.

It’s all over, bar the paper shuffling.

In response to my column last week, the Universal Music Group issued a statement confirming that Decca’s crossover output will be absorbed into the parent company’s UCJ. It maintains that the label itself will remain ‘active’ and that London will continue to be its ‘creative centre’. It names this process ‘realignment’, which I shall promptly add to my growing lexicon of recession-era synonyms for corporate elimination.

The facts are simple. Without crossover, Decca is dead. Its pop side has been defunct for years and its few extant classical artists – Renee Fleming, Julia Fischer, Erwin Schrott – are being shunted over to Universal’s other property, Deutsche Grammophon. 

Conversations with staff members suggest that all that will remain is an office front, one desk-jockey without a budget and a PA to answer the phone. A helpful cross-poster from the classical music forum brightcecilia comes up with much the same conclusion.

The death of Decca may be inevitable in present economic circumstances and it is certainly very sad. But, by covering up with factoids, euphemisms and simulations of continuing life, the bonus-seekers at Universal merely sustain the corporate make-believe that brought Decca to its knees in the first place. Some day Universal’s head of classics and jazz will be called to account for demolishing a sub-culture by a thousand cuts over a dozen years. Maybe Georg Solti will come back to haunt the vandals from his Hungarian resting-place. Or Pavarotti’s ghost will rise to sit on them. He knows where they live.

The story I broke in my Evening Standard column yesterday that the Decca record label is about to be shut down has kept me in phone calls and emails all day.

Producers phoned from London, Paris and Vienna to question the motives of Bogdan Roscic, the not-terribly-active Decca chief who jumped to a non-job in Sony the moment he heard his label was for the scrapheap. A Universal insider called to suggest that Chris Roberts, president of classical and jazz, may himself be heading for termination.

And the production team behind Julia Fischer’s new album protested that, while they have no idea what it takes to create a Decca sound they are, at Polyhymnia, the last of the Philips studio team. Sic transit gloria mundi – or, there goes another one. And just in case you have forgotten, it is all predicted here.

One of the day’s most interesting comments came from Rainer Mockert who, after 20 years in feature films, became involved in producing classical music DVDs.

Here, in part, is what Rainer says about the record bosses:

I was shocked at the level of some people in the top management of the former important labels. I recognised that these people think and act only in short term profit, based on a few artists who are very good but not good enough on a long term.  It reminded me of discussions with brokers on Wall Street, when I produced the only feature of Peter Sellars during a  small recession in the 1990s. Their only interest was how to secure their BMW’s or second/third apartments, by handling other people’s money. The black humor line from this time I never forget: Your money is not lost it only belongs to somebody else. This is true again today and has reached the classic music world.

I am not worried about classic music and what is happening right now  is probably refreshing and renewing the business. The big record companies totally forgot to support talent, they only invested in shooting stars who are forgotten in a few
years.

I am not worried about the violinist from Munich you are talking about because she is not only very good she seems also very secure about herself and what is important for her as an performer and artist.

You might ask, why I am very positive about classic music. Since I am back in this world I saw during the last 18 months some brilliant stagings of operas, which are attracting younger audiences. I left the music world after I produced the Mozart/DaPonte/Sellars cycle and Peter’s GIULIO CESARE in the early 90s because everybody started to copy him like 10 years earlier Chereau ( I was a young line producer on this RING at UNITEL). Peter was for sure also influenced by Jonathan Miller’s RIGOLETTO at the ENO, but he worked out his own way.

I started 14 months ago to produce live recordings for dvd and tv of operas which were never done before or very seldom or very different to existing ones. We are just finishing the postproduction of the Weimar RING. Not a staging like most of the other 10 RING’s I saw since the Chereau RING, which very often looked like Cirque du Soleil productions.

Check Weimar
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=dRQFcKA-fSk
http://wagneropera.blogspot.com/

The story I broke in my Evening Standard column yesterday that the Decca record label is about to be shut down has kept me in phone calls and emails all day.

Producers phoned from London, Paris and Vienna to question the motives of Bogdan Roscic, the not-terribly-active Decca chief who jumped to a non-job in Sony the moment he heard his label was for the scrapheap. A Universal insider called to suggest that Chris Roberts, president of classical and jazz, may himself be heading for termination.

And the production team behind Julia Fischer’s new album protested that, while they have no idea what it takes to create a Decca sound they are, at Polyhymnia, the last of the Philips studio team. Sic transit gloria mundi – or, there goes another one. And just in case you have forgotten, it is all predicted here.

One of the day’s most interesting comments came from Rainer Mockert who, after 20 years in feature films, became involved in producing classical music DVDs.

Here, in part, is what Rainer says about the record bosses:

I was shocked at the level of some people in the top management of the former important labels. I recognised that these people think and act only in short term profit, based on a few artists who are very good but not good enough on a long term.  It reminded me of discussions with brokers on Wall Street, when I produced the only feature of Peter Sellars during a  small recession in the 1990s. Their only interest was how to secure their BMW’s or second/third apartments, by handling other people’s money. The black humor line from this time I never forget: Your money is not lost it only belongs to somebody else. This is true again today and has reached the classic music world.

I am not worried about classic music and what is happening right now  is probably refreshing and renewing the business. The big record companies totally forgot to support talent, they only invested in shooting stars who are forgotten in a few
years.

I am not worried about the violinist from Munich you are talking about because she is not only very good she seems also very secure about herself and what is important for her as an performer and artist.

You might ask, why I am very positive about classic music. Since I am back in this world I saw during the last 18 months some brilliant stagings of operas, which are attracting younger audiences. I left the music world after I produced the Mozart/DaPonte/Sellars cycle and Peter’s GIULIO CESARE in the early 90s because everybody started to copy him like 10 years earlier Chereau ( I was a young line producer on this RING at UNITEL). Peter was for sure also influenced by Jonathan Miller’s RIGOLETTO at the ENO, but he worked out his own way.

I started 14 months ago to produce live recordings for dvd and tv of operas which were never done before or very seldom or very different to existing ones. We are just finishing the postproduction of the Weimar RING. Not a staging like most of the other 10 RING’s I saw since the Chereau RING, which very often looked like Cirque du Soleil productions.

Check Weimar
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=dRQFcKA-fSk
http://wagneropera.blogspot.com/

Two nights late due to snowfall and a dozen years after he last held the stage, Jonathan Miller’s production of Boheme opened last night at English National Opera. It was about forty watts short of full power.

Miller, as he made clear, shifted the setting to Brassai’s monochrome 1930s Paris of stony-eyed tarts and wall-faced punters. The visuals worked well on the whole and Isabella Bywater’s gray-white colour scheme was seasonally apt.

The flaw was Miller’s decision to position Rodolfo and his chums not as struggling artists but as spoilt Withnail rich kids who are slumming it as bohos for a couple of years before sprucing up for a job in Daddy’s business. That conceit, eliminating existential need, created an artificiality in the love relationships and cost the show  heavily in emotional impact. The hankies did not come out until very late in Act Four.

Alfie Boe was a sweet-voiced, unimposing Rodolfo while Melody Moore sang a serviceable Mimi who never occupies centre stage. Roland Wood was a restrained Marcello, his restraint the more obvious for the exuberance of Hanan Alattar’s Musetta. This Lebanese-American soprano, on debut, is definitely one to watch. Miguel Hart-Bedoya conducted, inflexibly for my taste. There was no rubato, no hint of momentary inspiration in any quarter.

I wonder whether television was not partly to blame for the feeling that we were at a general rehearsal rather than a first night. The show was filmed, front stage and back, on two channels of Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. Was it in order to manage the close-ups that the lights dimmed on stage at crucial moments, casting Rodolfo and Mimi’s faces in shadow through scenes of love and parting? Is the Coliseum on an energy-saving scheme? 

More light, I wanted to shout. Where the hell is Goethe when we really need him?

No matter: Boheme will run and run, at www.eno.org

.

Two nights late due to snowfall and a dozen years after he last held the stage, Jonathan Miller’s production of Boheme opened last night at English National Opera. It was about forty watts short of full power.

Miller, as he made clear, shifted the setting to Brassai’s monochrome 1930s Paris of stony-eyed tarts and wall-faced punters. The visuals worked well on the whole and Isabella Bywater’s gray-white colour scheme was seasonally apt.

The flaw was Miller’s decision to position Rodolfo and his chums not as struggling artists but as spoilt Withnail rich kids who are slumming it as bohos for a couple of years before sprucing up for a job in Daddy’s business. That conceit, eliminating existential need, created an artificiality in the love relationships and cost the show  heavily in emotional impact. The hankies did not come out until very late in Act Four.

Alfie Boe was a sweet-voiced, unimposing Rodolfo while Melody Moore sang a serviceable Mimi who never occupies centre stage. Roland Wood was a restrained Marcello, his restraint the more obvious for the exuberance of Hanan Alattar’s Musetta. This Lebanese-American soprano, on debut, is definitely one to watch. Miguel Hart-Bedoya conducted, inflexibly for my taste. There was no rubato, no hint of momentary inspiration in any quarter.

I wonder whether television was not partly to blame for the feeling that we were at a general rehearsal rather than a first night. The show was filmed, front stage and back, on two channels of Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. Was it in order to manage the close-ups that the lights dimmed on stage at crucial moments, casting Rodolfo and Mimi’s faces in shadow through scenes of love and parting? Is the Coliseum on an energy-saving scheme? 

More light, I wanted to shout. Where the hell is Goethe when we really need him?

No matter: Boheme will run and run, at www.eno.org

.

English National Opera are offering best seats for tomorrow’s opening night of Jonathan Miller’s new Boheme for as little as £20 – a saving of £59 they shout, in a last-minute email.

Just click online – www.eno.org – and you could be rubbing shoulders with the Great and the Good – you know, like the new chairman of the Arts Council, a gaggle of critics, some out-of-work actors and leading insolvency practitioners.

The premiere night has, admittedly, been postponed by two nights because of snow (let’s not go there again).

But if ENO are having to give away best seats to its top draw for as little as one Adam Smith note (about $27 in greenbacks) it’s not just the snow that’s keeping folks at home. This could be turning into a box-office winter of severe discontent.

For the first time I can remember, an opera premiere in London has been cancelled by severe weather. The snow is six inches thick on the ground and Jonathan Miller’s keenly awaited return to the Coliseum will have to be awaited until Wednesday, as English National Opera cannot guarantee getting its employees – let alone the audience – safely home to bed.

Such a shame. Three thousand people could have sung along to ‘your tiny hand is frozen’.

Whatever happened to Spirit of the Blitz?

For the first time I can remember, an opera premiere in London has been cancelled by severe weather. The snow is six inches thick on the ground and Jonathan Miller’s keenly awaited return to the Coliseum will have to be awaited until Wednesday, as English National Opera cannot guarantee getting its employees – let alone the audience – safely home to bed.

Such a shame. Three thousand people could have sung along to ‘your tiny hand is frozen’.

Whatever happened to Spirit of the Blitz?