The results are just in:

Soprano Pretty Yende is top lady, tenor Rene Barbera top bloke.

Here’s a full report (in Dutch). Lucky winners, with a 30,000 Euro prize.
The losers, as reported earlier, are the Russian players in the orchestra.

I hear word that Diego Matheuz has been appointed principal conductor at La Fenice in Venice.

Diego Matheuz

He’s 27, Venezuelan, another product of the Sistema. Here‘s the agent’s biog.

That Dude, he’s starting to breed.

The year after next is a big one for Bayreuth – 200 years since the birth of the saviour – oops, founder.

So the director who gets to stage the 2013 Ring will face all the sentimental scrutiny associated with major musical anniversaries.

It should have been Wim Wenders, but he couldn’t see eye to 3-D eye with Katie Wagner.

She announced his replacement this morning.

It’s Frank Castorf.

Frank who?

He’s been running the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxembourg-Platz in Berlin for almost 20 years and has a reputation for daring productions.

Outside German-speaking territory, he’s very little known.

© Thomas Aurin
This could be a sign of Katie’s Bayreuth turning narrow and inward-looking.

It’s the final in Moscow tonight of Operalia, billed as Placido Domingo: The World Opera Competition.

An orchestra of the finest musicians in the Russian capital is being assembled to accompany the hopeful contenders for the grand prize. Past winners include Erwin Schrott and Rolando Villazon.

A professor at the state university, an acquaintance of mine, was approached to play cor anglais  in the orchestra. He has just told me the pay he was offered for a day’s rehearsal, plus concert.

It was 1,000 rubles. That’s 25 Euros (£20, $30). Apparently most of the orchestra of the Stanislavsky theatre are working for less.

Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. A coffee costs $10. A whole concert fee can be drunk in rehearsal breaks.

I am publishing the miserable fee scale in order to bring it to Domingo’s attention, assuming he is unaware. Placido is a generous man who often shows solidarity with less fortunate musicians lower down the order, most recently with the locked-out musicians at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. This might be a good occasion once again to demonstrate that humanity.

The final concert will be broadcast online tonight here at 1945 Moscow time.