Following my riposte yesterday to a chauvinist critic who attacked her French diction, the international mezzo soprano Rinat Shaham has sent me her reaction to my piece, which I publish below:

If there was ever a time to STOP criticizing *international* *opera* *singers* for their ACCENT, it is now. We travel around the world and “dare” to sing in languages that our not “our own”. Some of us are fluent in many , some of us are less so, but we still conquer the difficulties of the language with many other skills, in addition to a correct pronunciation (if not with a 100% “native” sound).

Almost no opera singer can be praised for singing a foreign language with absolutely no accent. Not in a big role where you are on stage 2.5 hours out of 3, in my case. In the old days, opera singers sang in their own language,in many cases singing a translation of their role into their own mother tongue. This is no longer the case of course, and more over- today you can not only hear the singer’s words but also read them and their translation in the super titles projected above.

Some of my colleagues also noted another interesting point on other similar threads, quote:  “There has always been a double standard. American singers go to great pain (and expense!) to coach their roles with good diction coaches in order to sound as “natural” as they can in the multiple languages we need today in order to perform. I hear many non-english language singers butcher our language when they are asked to sing an opera in English and are not corrected in any fashion. Every singer has a natural accent when they are singing in a foreign language. To criticize it is amateurish on the part of a critic and should be ignored. I have always trusted my diction coaches to point out where I can improve my diction, not my accent. And the good ones don’t attempt to do that.”
The fact is, I speak French, I studied the language in high school and since then have been performing in many French language productions (as Melisande, Blanch, Charlotte, Carmen, to name a few) and I have been coaching throughout the years with some of the best French coaches available. For this current production, I have, months in advance, worked with a French coach in New York, and after arriving in Brussels, with a wonderful Parisian language coach, and with a team-full of Francophone colleagues. I have adjusted my R to the spoken one by the request of both Laurent Pelly, the director, and Alain Altinoglu the conductor.

I find it easy to speak with it, since it is similar to my Hebrew R, but for singing I have worked to adjust it to be to everybody’s satisfaction. My French if I may say so is not perfect by any means, but it is understood by all and was corrected if ever was anything not clear or in error….I don’t know if this was really a “racist” comment in the review or just a nationalistic one, but in my opinion, in OUR time, there is no place for it anymore, again- we ALL have some kind of an accent. To call on a single foreigner and accuse them of it, is just simply.. well.. you decide.

RS

One of the businessmen closest to Valery Gergiev has been arrested in Russia and charged with embezzlement and fraud. Some 300 million rubles are said to be missing from the Gergiev Foundation, which funds many of the foreign activities of the Mariinsky Theatre, as well as the White Nights Festival and the newly announced Moscow Easter Festival.

Igor Zotov, head of the Foundation, went  missing last month, apparently to the Ukraine. Warrants were issued after a complaint by Gergiev’s office. He has been arrested in Russia by the FSB and charged under Section 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code, dealing with large-scale fraud.

The investigations continue.

Here‘s a first report (in Russian).

A competitor has tipped up off that Classic FM magazine is to shut down after its April issue.

Apparently, a difference of opinion between the station owners and Haymarket (who also publish Gramophone). There has been no official announcement, but the trade has been informed.

There have been deep discussions at English National Opera over how to present The Death of Klinghoffer, the John Adams opera in which Palestinian terrorists murder a wheelchair invalid on a Mediterranean cruise. Previous productions and recordings have gone totally neutral on their visual presentation, trying not to inflame an already overheated issue.

Many commercial sites have refused to post the cover image for Penny Woolcock’s television film of the opera (below). The image itself is curiously depersonalised: you see nothing of the victim.

ENO, in an image released today to Slipped Disc, has decided to go full-on with the brutal act: a helpless man in a wheelchair, executed without mercy by PLO thugs. It will not please anyone in the Palestinian camp. Click here for what you’ll see next month on the billings:

I am hearing from Russia that a top member of Valery Gergiev’s team, has been arrested on suspicion of robbing the Gergiev Foundation. I had a tip-off from a member of the maestro’s entourage.

More information as it comes in. Fuller report here.

Martin Brabbins has been named chief conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ken-David Masur, 34, has been named principal guest conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

photo: Chris Lee

If you have any time next year to take your mind off the economy and the Olympics, the spare attention will be taken up by a tootle of flutes.

It’s the 50th anniversary of the death of Jacques Ibert, a French composer who did more for the silver tube than anyone since Pan, as well as the centenary of the birth of his compatriot Jean Francaix, who wrote a much-played flute concerto and stuff.

But the biggie, and they don’t get biggier than this, is Friedrich der Grosse, the flute-playing Prussian who made tootling as obligatory as the goose-step. Fred the Great has gone down in history for many other things, not least his influence on another German leader whose name momentarily escapes me. But the tercentenary of Frederick’s birth will not escape unnoticed. Oh, no.

In Potsdam, they are planning a musical, Frederick, Myth and Tragedy.

I can just imagine the show-stopper:

It’s raining hard/Call off the hunts/I’ll get out the flute/With my teacher, Quantz.

Feel free to send in your own contributions.