The composer of Two Boys, discussing the Opera North saga, gives a remarkably frank and sensitive account of how they dealt with sex talk when underage kids were around.

Here’s an extract:

Craig Lucas and I have just gone through an idyllic collaborative process with the ENO and the Met putting togetherTwo Boys. Anybody who wanted to read the libretto could read it, and all the adults in the production were charged by our director, Bart Sher, to take care of the kids (we had a dozen actors and two singers), making sure nobody was uncomfortable. Bart spoke with the parents of the kids — particularly the singing ones — well in advance of the production period. And in the interests of full disclosure here, allow me to excerpt for you some moments from the opera:

Congressman. did any girl give u a haandjob this weekend?
Page. i’m single right now
Congressman. did u spank yourself this weekend?
Page. no
Congressman. in the shower where do you throw the towel?
Page. in the laundry
Congressman. just kinda slow
Page. it works

(If you don’t know the reference, I’m not going to tell you, but it’s a matter of public record).

Read the whole blogpost here.

Note that Nico does not join the media gang-rape of Opera North.

Three months ago, it looked as if the London Mozart Players were going out of business. Refused Arts Council funding and short of £50,000 to pay the musicians, things were looking dire when the orchestra launched an emergency appeal at Buckingham Palace.

Today, they have given me the news that not only has the target been reached but they’ve had an additional donation of £50,000 and a commitment of long-term support from Croydon Council, which owns the hall where they play. This is welcome news in tough times.

Here’s the statement from managing director Simon Funnell:

The London Mozart Players is delighted to announce the successful
outcome of its fundraising appeal, launched by Associate Conductor
Hilary Davan Wetton on 20 April 2011. As reported in the national
press at Easter, the orchestra was facing closure unless urgent funds
were raised over the summer.

Two months on, the appeal is on track to reach its target of £50,000
by the end of July.

The LMP’s Managing Director, Simon Funnell, said: “The response
from the public has been hugely generous and incredibly heart-warming
with dozens of donations ranging from just a few pounds to over
£5,000. We have been very touched that, at a time when everyone is
feeling the squeeze of austerity, people care enough about the LMP to
ensure our survival.”

A dinner at Buckingham Palace in early June hosted by the LMP’s
Patron, HRH The Earl of Wessex, also raised a significant amount of
income. In addition to the main appeal, a generous individual donor
has made a further donation of £50,000. The London Borough of
Croydon, home of the orchestra for over 20 years, has also agreed to
continue to support the LMP until March 2013, committing £180,000
over the two-year period from April 2011.

But it isn’t just on the financial front that the LMP has good
news. The appointment of Marieke Blankestijn as its new Leader, who
will share the role with current Co-leader Susanna Candlin, has also
been announced. Currently Leader of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe,
Marieke worked for many years with the LMP’s Music Director Gérard
Korsten.

Gérard Korsten, the LMP’s Music Director, said “I am delighted
to be working with two such fantastic violinists in Susie and Marieke;
they will be a formidable team for the orchestra and their joint
appointment brings the orchestra both freshness and continuity.”

Simon Funnell commented: “2011 really has been a roller-coaster of
a year but this fantastic appointment, which comes on top of the news
of Roxanna Panufnik’s appointment as the orchestra’s new Associate
Composer, shows that the London Mozart Players is still a vibrant and
relevant orchestra, more than sixty years after it was founded.”

From a bleak picture just a few months ago, the LMP is now looking
towards a brighter future, with a new series of concerts beginning at
St John’s, Smith Square in October, sponsored by M&G Investments, as
well as continuing its relationship with Orchestras Live, Fairfield
Halls and its many supporters around Croydon and the south east.

The twitter storm that has erupted around Opera North’s cancellation of a new work for schools by Billy Elliot creator Lee Hall has, so far, generated far more heat than light.

Hall, seen here on BBC Breakfast, started the ball rolling with a call to the Guardian on Friday, asking if he could write an article about the censorship he was facing in Leeds. He had been asked to cut a couple of lines of text. When this blew into total cancellation, the playwright earned global martyr status and the opera company became a whipping boy for every egalitarian voice from Jeannette Winterson down. Opera North was suddenly the new Stonewall and normally sane voices were calling for a boycott.

Hang on a minute. This is opera, right? Gay people are the single largest non-organised component in an opera house, after chorus. No opera house on earth would knowingly engage in anti-gay discrimination. This very month, there is a gay-themed opera, Two Boys, at the London Coliseum which breaks the barrier of under-age sex. Opera North is innately part of an artform that cannot risk homophobia.

Much of the information has come from secondary and tertiary sources. The New York Times story did not speak to a single person or institution involved. Common sense and journalistic practice went right out of the window. ‘It’s about silencing gay people and wanting to wipe them out of being in this play,’ said Hall.

So what really happened? From the evidence to hand, it appears the local authority objected to a couple of lines, the librettist took umbrage and the whole thing was blown out of all proportion. Opera North has accused Lee Hall of showboating.

As matters stand, it appears that the opera – Beached – may yet go ahead in those schools where parents are happy to see it.

After all this fuss, everyone will want to see it. Lee Hall has got what he wanted, unlimited exposure for the script he believes in.

There’s also a composer, by the way. His name is Harvey Brough. In most operas, the composer comes first. He seems to have been forgotten.

That’s not the only priority that has got grotesquely skewed in this sorry, overheated saga.

Take a look at the Billboard classical charts if you want a lesson in contemporary realities.

At number one, and number six as well, is Jackie Evancho, a variety kid who came second in America’s Got Talent and meets all the key criteria in Simon Cowell’s shlock box. She is small and cute, with a voice that sounds freakishly adult. It lacks anything that might be mistaken for expression or character and occasionally veers off the note, but it’s a variety act, not an opera audition. Eight million viewers and President Obama love it. Here‘s a Youtube sample.

After a debut hit with O Holy Night, Jackie’s now writing her own. Have we been here before? Do I see a Charlotte Church in the making?

This is a mockery of classical music. So is the rest of the chart. Nothing classical about it.

Can’t someone sue Billboard for misrepresentation?

——–

Here are the latest sales figures: The Official USA ” Dream With Me” sales numbers are:
week one 161k,week two 77k = 238k, the HDD 50-55k is the estimate for week #3( ends Sunday July 3) so definitely well over 250k for the USA alone and over 300k worldwide right now.

The city of Geneva is among the most boring on earth, stuffed with international box-tickers, sporting bribers and private bankers. The last time it had a cultural profile was half a century ago when the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande was conducted by Stravinsky’s friend Ernest Ansermet and recorded regularly and profitably by Decca. Ansermet was not a very nice man and more than a little antisemitic, but he ran a crack orchestra with relatively modern programmes and the world sat up and took notice. He retired in 1967 and the town has gone quiet since.

None of the succeeding conductors has done much to make waves, though Armin Jordan (1985-1997) and Fabio Luisi (1997-2002) kept the band up to scratch and Neeme Järvi, who arrives next year, will be his usual typhoon self.

What’s really changing, though, is the management. The new guy, ostensibly a banker, is one of the founders and fixers of the Verbier Festival, a real livewire. Miguel Esteban his name is, and he looks like the young Michael Douglas.

He won’t leave the orchestra undisturbed in its slumbers. This could be the start of an Ansermet awakening.

Don’t give away the ending, but I can tell you it’s a singer what done it.

René Kollo, the retired German tenor, has his first detective novel out this month.

Overheard audience comment at Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Zagreb last night, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

The venue was a sports arena, but the atmosphere was intense. Here are some terrific spectator pics.