I’ve had an email from Lake Placid, telling me that the bassonist who joined in 1947 has just hung up his instrument.

Has anyone, anywhere, played longer?

Here’s the mail:

Mr. Lebrecht

I am Music Director of the Lake Placid Sinfonietta (NY), which has
been in operating since 1917 and is now a 6 week Summer festival
orchestra. Our Bassoonist David Van Hoesen just retired last Saturday
(performing a solo no less) and he has been in the group every year
since 1947 which could be the longest orchestra tenure ever? He was a
legendary teacher at Eastman having taught many of todays leading
Bassoonists including Judith Leclair and Roger Nye of the NY Phil. I
have a blog but your readership is huge and would do pointing out this
incredible career the justice it deserves. I am happy to provide more
information if you wish
Best wishes
Ron Spigelman

The soprano Hila Baggio has asked me to clarify Italian reports that she walked out of Graham Vick’s festival production of Mose in Egitto on the grounds that it was ‘dangerous and offensive.’

On the contrary, she was never part of the cast, and never left any performance in the middle.

In an email she adds: ‘I actually saw the production two days ago and I found it not Anti-Israeli and not Anti-Jewish. I found it very emotional and a sad reality of a conflict that exists forever between Israelis and Arabs and Grahm Vick showed it in a very intelligent way. ‘

Hila can be seen at the Rossini Festival in “La scala di seta”.

I’m heading to Glyndebourne this afternoon with a daughter to see Britten’s version of the Henry James story. The conductor is Jakub Hr?ša, the director Jonathan Kent.

The same performance will be beamed live on the internet to anyone who cares to click on the Guardian website.

So why shlepp all the way down to Sussex to see something I could enjoy in the comfort of my home? Simple.

Opera, like sex, is not something you can properly do alone. You need the sense of sharing it with others, even the comfort of strangers.

I’m also intrigued to see whether the live relay affects, in any way, the perception of the audience and performers.

If it does, I’ll report back.

Universal renewed her record contract this summer, then fired her manager as co-head of its artists agency.

Will Anna follow her dearly beloved Jeff?

Unlikely. Jeffrey Vanderveen is trying to get a job with Opus3 artists agency, but it’s fairly low-level. Not even head of vocal, I hear.

Universal fired him partly for an earlier embarrassment (all can now be revealed) and partly because it needed to make a move to Berlin, where IMG has started a vocal agency with two very smart cookies, David Blackburn and Thomas Channel.

Anna won’t follow Jeff because she can’t face the hassle and it doesn’t matter that much to her any more. She’s got her exit strategy in place – a restaurant in Vienna, she tells everyone. She won’t be singing arias for the rest of her life.

If there had been a risk she was going to leave, Universal would never have dumped Jeff, I’m told.

But to make assurance doubly sure, it granted a swift promotion to Judith Neuhoff, who works part-time for Daniel Barenboim and enjoys a girlie-talk relationship with Trebs. She is now co-director of the agency with one specific task: Keep Anna Happy.

LATE ADD: Internally, she is credited with saving Rolando Villazon from the depths of despond and getting him booked again at the Met on the strength of his recent Onegin in Japan.

A few days ago I reported – exclusively, since none of the music media dared to touch the story for fear of losing label ads – that EMI had sacked the head of Classics, Eric Dingman. The euphemism used in the convoluted internal email was that he’s ‘moving on’.

It could be that nobody has told Eric yet, since his Facebook page still lists him as head of EMI Classics, but I guess he’ll read slipped disc when he tries to get back to work, and find he’s got no work to get back to. Tough old world, the music biz.

The big news this morning is that Universal Music have got rid of half of their classical artists’ agency. One of the two founding partners, Jeffrey Vanderveen, has been fired as foretold exclusively here.

No, not fired. He has been totally whitewashed out of the company, which is changing its name to Centre Stage Management under the direction of his former co-conspirator, Manfred Seipt, and a woman, Judith Neuhoff, who works part-time for Daniel Barenboim. Here’s the internal email: