Brad Wilber provides information, or speculation, about artists ho have been engaged by the Met. He has been doing so for 15 years, since the dawn of the blogosphere. Now the Met have ‘persuaded’ him to shut down.

Read all about it in the Los Angeles Times, and in Wilber’s own statement.

Who on earth do these people think they are? Whatever became of the first amendment?

If Brad wants to post on (offshore) slipped disc, he’s welcome to get in touch.

Funny things happen in these summer galas. According to the Berliner Morgenpost, the tenor ended the concert with a bleeding lip. ‘It was all in fun,’ said Anna, her hunky husband standing by. Erwin seems to find it funny. Read all about it here.

 Conductor Marco Armiliato (left), the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, the Munich tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott in Berlin on the forest stage after her open-air concert. Photo: Clemens Bilan / DAPD

A young conductor, Jesper Nordin, prepared the Copenhagen Philharmonic for a performance of Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite, followed by Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs with Renee Fleming. Krystian Järvi then arrived to take over the general rehearsal and the concert.

The young conductor (below) watched closely…. and did not like what he saw. Not one little bit. Here‘s how he describes it on a new blog.

Here’s a sample quote:

I was surprised to find Mrs. Fleming unfocused, the orchestra too loud and Järvi extremely nonchalant.
By some, his casual body language when conducting – when it looks the best, it’s somewhat akin to a Bernstein or Charles Munch – is interpreted as ‘charming’ and as being extremely ‘on top of everything’.
As in: “Oh look, his beats are so random he must not care how it looks – simply because he’s so good it doesn’t matter!!” I didn’t quite mean that as sarcastic as it may seem, but to those who believe it doesn’t matter how a conductor beats or ‘carries himself on the podium’, I can’t begin to tell you how wrong you are.

The National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica will not be engaging Daniel Nazareth as chief conductor next season, and that’s official.

The reasons, given to La Nacion, is that Nazareth’s $60,000 salary would take up more than half the orchestra’s budget for conductors and soloists. Also, that the maestro has made remarks that are ‘disrespectful’ to local artists, officials and the country itself.

Nazareth, born in India, has been music director of the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, and the MDR radio orchestra in Leipzig.

He has yet to give his side of the story. But La Nacion seems to have the lowdown.