Here’s a press release, just in, on the general evacuation of Danish Opera.
Press release
Director of the Royal Danish Opera Keith Warner to leave the Royal Danish Theatre
Keith Warner has at a staff meeting at the Opera House this evening announced that he has been granted a release from his contract, which was to expire on 31 July 2014.
As a consequence Jakub Hr?ša, who has since October 2011 been acting artistic consultant for Keith Warner, has announced that he no longer wishes to assume the position as music director at the Royal Danish Theatre as of the summer of 2013.
Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Opera, Keith Warner, states:
“It is with immense sadness that I feel I must resign my post at the Royal Danish Opera. A combination of factors, made acute by the recent devastating budget cuts, has led me to feel that in the present circumstances, I am unable to realise my great dreams for the company. We part good friends. The talent of the performing company is beyond compare and the dedication of the entire staff is without reproach. I’m sure we will continue to build pathways towards each other in the future.”
Director of the Royal Danish Theatre Erik Jacobsen regrets Keith Warner’s decision and states:
“I sincerely regret that Keith Warner no longer wishes to stay in Copenhagen. I will now in joint collaboration with the rest of the theatre’s management and board of directors ensure that the transitional period until a new artistic director has been found will be as smooth as possible. The repertoire at the Royal Danish Opera has already been planned for the next couple of years. So we will allocate the necessary time it will take to find a new artistic director who is to ensure a high artistic standard.”
Until a new artistic director has been appointed, Director of the Ensemble of the Royal Danish Opera Sven Müller will assume responsibility for the artistic management of the Opera House.
Press contact:
Director of Communications, Eva Hein / +45 33 69 69 80 / Mobile +45 25 51 79 80
Kind regards,
The Press Department
The Royal Danish Theatre
The Danish government attack on the Royal Theatre has just drawn blood.
Keith Warner, the company’s artistic director, and Jakub Hrusa, its incoming chief conductor, have resigned in protest after weeks of negotiation aimed at mitigating the cuts.
The double whammy is the biggest signal yet that Denmark has been declared by its government a no-go zone for accomplished artists. From tonight, Denmark will be staging Hamlet without the prince. More here.
The sports pages, and some front pages, are in black today for Joe Paterno, one of the most successful and beloved coaches in college football. He has died of lung cancer, aged 85. Paterno’s last years were marred by the discovery that his close associate and defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with child sex offences.
‘How was I to know?’ said Paterno. ‘I never came across something like that before.’ They fired him, anyway. Some said today that Paterno died of a broken heart.
There are similarities with the firing of Ben Zander, though not exact parallels. Zander knew his videographer had served time for a sex offence. He believed the man to be rehabilitated – and there is no suggestion that he offended again at any time at NEC or in the last 20 years. Zander was fired anyway. At 72, his epitaph will forever be clouded by this episode.
Like Paterno, he was naive and innocent of wrongdoing. Without in any way mitigating the monstrous crime of sexual abuse of children, the punishment inflicted on these men is disproportionate to their foolish misjudgements. And in Zander’s case, it appears NEC had fired him before it had the sex excuse. NEC president Tony Woodcock refuses to answer questions on this issue.
I’ve been sent these private pictures of the pro-Government rally in Budapest. The faces and expressions have the totalitarian stamp reminiscent of rallies under former regimes.The rise of state fascism in Hungary is one of Europe’s greatest crises of 2012.
Any sympathy you might have felt for the sex-pest banker, which can’t have been much, will surely dissipate at the news that his stand-by-your-man Madame has linked up with Arianna to launch the French version of Huffington Post.
Huff specialises in getting the rich and powerful to write articles saying how great and good they are. I can’t wait to read the piece by banker Dom on how terrible it is t be sexually harassed by much younger women. Mme Anne promises to be ‘transparent’. Oh, yeah.
Will Wyatt was a BBC career man, rising up the greasy pole to head of television and deputy director general until he took early retirement in 1999. He is now an independent film maker. Next Sunday, he presents the lives of two sister piano prodigies who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna and were taken in as child refugees by his wife’s grandparents. Neither ever married or achieved fame.
Will met them in the 1990s and was smitten by their charm and grace. Toni, the older sister, died in 2007. Rosi, the younger, lasted just long enough to see the film of her life, which goes out on BBC4 next Sunday. She died last week.
Will has written a personal introduction to the film for Slipped Disc:
TONI AND ROSI – BBC4 Sunday 29th January 2012. 11.05pm
I first met Toni and Rosi Grunschlag in the mid 90s. They were Jewish, Viennese, New Yorker sisters – funny, argumentative, determined, in short great copy – who had made a career as a piano duo. They were never stars but had toured Europe, played important venues in the USA and recorded. Music was their life.
They had been brought up in a tiny apartment in Vienna in the twenties and thirties, “big room, small room, kitchen”. Their father was determined that his children be musicians. The eldest, David, was a brilliant violinist, chosen as a pupil by Bronislaw Huberman, with whom he went to Palestine to be a founder member and later concert master of the Palestine, now Israel, Symphony Orchestra.
The girls were both piano prodigies. Their parents were able to travel to Palestine but they had to remain in Nazi occupied Vienna. When all else failed music saved them. Toni wrote to Huberman whose intervention secured them visas to England. It was my wife’s grandparents who took them in here and with whom they had formed an undying bond. The sisters later travelled to New York and were reunited with their parents. Neither sister married so by the time the film was made they had lived, rehearsed and played together for eighty years.
I fell in love with them and their story and videoed them in their summer house on Cape Cod to capture their memories for the family. My career had been at the BBC and thought Toni and Rosi could make a wonderful film. In 2006 the sisters were invited to give three concerts in Vienna as part of Holocaust commemorations. My wife went with them and reported that an American singer, Todd Murray, had also fallen in love with them and was making a documentary.
At the beginning of 2007, Toni died. I decided that I could not forgive myself if there was not a film about these two indomitable and inspiring women and that although I had last made a film in 1977 I would go ahead and make one. Time was short so I would fund it myself and try to raise money on the way. Todd Murray agreed that we could be partners and that we could combine material.
In 2009 I took a crew to Vienna to film Rosi on another visit, this time to speak at a memorial concert for Huberman, given by Joshua Bell. I later filmed her in New York in the building where she had lived since 1943 and returning to the house in the Hertfordshire countryside where she and Toni had first found sanctuary. In 2010 Rosi played a recital in London which raised a substantial sum towards the budget.
It was a great moment when I was able to show her the film. I had one more copyright release for her to sign and her spirit and canniness had not deserted her: “Vell OK Vill, but first I see the film.” She loved it, chuckling and adding a commentary, “That’s right!”, ”The Nazis”, “Ve had to get out”. At the end, “Now I sign.”
Alas, Rosi died on 15th January this year aged 89. Todd Murray had shown her the film again and she was excited to know that it was to be broadcast by the BBC. www.toniandrosithefilm.com
(c) Will Wyatt, 2012
Rita Gorr, perhaps the best loved Belgian opera voice, has died in Spain, aged 85.
She was a successful Carmen, Charlotte, Dalila, Eboli and more in Strasbourg and Paris in the 1950s before her career went international. She made her last stage appearance, resiliently, in 2007.
