Rub your eyes, turn all the clocks back, the little guy’s on the road again.
Charles Aznavour, 87 years old, is touring France to packed houses. He plans one more big night at Olympia. See here.
And he’s not alone. Juliette Greco is planning a comeback tour next year. She’s 84.
Anne Sylvestre is still on the go, at a mere 77.
And they really are going strong, no compromises to advancing age.
Must be something in the diet.
A throwaway remark in a German interview earlier this month:
In plain English, Americans want more show, Europeans more music.
She may have been misquoted, of course, but it does sound as though she takes the US audience less seriously than the home crowd.
Netrebko has cancelled Carnegie Hall twice in five years. Makes you wonder.
Here‘s the official reason for her withdrawal, citing doctor’s orders.
When Gidon Kremer this summer quit the Lockenhaus Festival after 30 years, some newspapers thought it was the end of the road for the offbeat, low-key Austrian event. But Kremer has quietly nominated a successor and now the festival has endorsed him.
He’s the Franco-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt.
Kremer told the Vienna newspaper Der Standard: ‘I did not want a star or big name to take over. I wanted a personality who sees Lockenhaus differently from the way I’ve done for 30 years, but will still preserve its spirit.’
The violinist’s remarks are consistent with his outspoken attacks on the classical music star system, first published on slipped disc.
Altstaedt is already at work, quietly booking next summer’s events. Here’s the official announcement.
He’s topping out the day-long, Europe-wide Franz Liszt events with a concert from Bayreuth, where the great composer slowly died while his daughter Cosima kept the summer festival running. Still, at least he got a cheerful mausoleum. And Thielemann is now, to all intents and purposes, music director at Bayreuth.
Tonight’s programme, on BBC Radio 3:
6.30 City Hall, Grosses Festspielhaus, Bayreuth (LIVE)
Wagner: Overture to ‘Tannhäuser’;
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A, S. 125; Totentanz, symphonic poem (Paraphrase on ‘Dies irae’).
Konstantin Sherbakov (piano),
Orchestra of the Weimar Liszt School of Music,
Christian Thielemann (conductor).
The Opéra de Paris is staging an online exhibition of work by its aptly-named house photographer, Roger Pic.
Pic, who died in 2001, covered all the Paris theatres. But he was most involved in the Théatre Garnier, home of the Paris Opéra until the opening of the Bastille, and he is credited in this exhibition with helping to define its visual style between 1959 and 1970, working with such divas as Callas, Schwarzkopf, Crespin and Grace Bumbry.
The online show is not easy to navigate and the essays are inaccessible. But the Pics are a treat.
A chance exchange with a former Covent Garden press officer Rita Grudzien introduced me to the work of Pat Albeck, which will be exhibited next week at Norwich Cathedral.
Pat’s husband, Peter Rice, is a successful set designer for opera. Here‘s a list of his credits.
Pat does the washing-up. In a very classy way. Here are some of her fabulous towels.
