We’ve seen enough conductors who can hardly be bothered to yawn at work.
Here’s one who really loves his job. Introducing Joseph R. Olefirowicz playing to the orchestra camera in a Vienna Volksoper performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
Book that man.
UPDATE: here
She’s Russian, but she lives in Costa Rica. Varvara Soyfer gives her first television interview.
We’ve been getting reports that the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra has laid off a concertmaster and eight other players. There are already 20 unfilled vacancies in the ranks.
The problem doesn’t seem to be financial, as there’s plenty of oil sponsorship from Petronas to pay for high-profile recordings and cheap concert seats. There’s a residue of bad blood from the departure of founder-conductor Kees Bakels a few years back, along with complaints against high-handed management.
A Save the Malaysian Orchestra page has been opened on Facebook, but there’s low visibility around in a fog of misinformation. If you know more about the situation, do post below.
Read the latest UPDATE here.
An investigation into the weird and far from wonderful ways that the Bayreuth Festival decides who’s in and who’s out has ruled that there’s nothing illegal going on. Report summary here.
Such a relief.
Much of the investigation focused on which media were invited and whether they got one seat or two. As for the poor festival staff who no onger get a look-in and the hundreds of sponsors’ guests, well let’s not go there, shall we?
Well, some might say he forced a lot of good sopranos’ voices down a register, but what did this one do to deserve 50,000 Euros?
The eyebrows of the year award goes to Cecilia Bartoli.
Here‘s the story.
We’ve been crunching the numbers of the late Charles Anthony (birthname: Carusoto) who sang a record 2,928 times at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, between debut in 1954 and retirement in 2010. He died yesterday, aged 82.
Everyone is saying his is a record that will never be beaten.
Perhaps in a single opera house, it won’t.
But across an international career there has to be at least one singer who has delivered 3,000 nights and more.
Take, for instance, Peaceful Sunday. He made his opera debut as a baritone in 1959, aged 17, and is still singing in that register to the present day. There was also a long, glorious interlude when he was known as a tenor.
Over 53 years as an opera singer, averaging 70 nights a year at his prime – well, do the math.
Placido Domingo may have sung close to 3,500 nights of opera, not to mention over 100 studio recordings. Phenomenal.
A resolution has been passed in Strabourg, calling for an investigation into whether Hungary, increasingly isolated by its racist government, is complying with EU laws and values. Press release here. The move appears to chime with an appeal last week by conductor Adam Fischer.
Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar, an Israeli Arab citizen who fosters musical dialogue between the country’s different communities, has been announced as this year’s winner of the Yoko Ono Courage award. He will receive the prize at MOMA in New York of Feb 26. Haaretz has the details.
Nabeel is a former player in Daniel Barenboim’s East-West Diwan and Yoko, it seems to me, has got it right.
Far better in the cause of peace to promote grassroots contacts as Nabeel and Daniel are doing, than to join the pro-Pal mob in screaming for boycotts. One is productive, the other destructive. QED.
They’re singing ‘free and gay’, but those security men don’t look impressed.
Production details:
Opera’r Ddraig’s cast performing in Cardiff City Centre (Queen Street and St David’s Centre) to promote our upcoming double bill, to be held at The Gate Theatre, Cardiff, 14th-17th February 2012.
Buy Tickets here: http://www.thegate.org.uk/buy-tickets/ or via phone: 029 2048 3344
Music: Handel – ‘Oh, the pleasure of the plains’ (Acis and Galatea)
View full production details, cast lists, photos and biographies on our website:
http://operarddraig.co.uk/current-production/
http://operarddraig.co.uk/the-cast-2012/
http://operarddraig.co.uk/rehearsal-photos/
The first shoots of a turbulent spring?
You thought bankrupt Greece or borderline Portugal? Forget it.
War-torn Sudan or Sri Lanka? Relatively happy on this scale.
Mob-ruled Mexico? Positiviely beaming.
The world’s unhappiest country, according the annual IPSOS survey, is Hungary.
It has always been a morose place, but it’s down 4 percent this year and falling. This racist government is getting everyone down.
The happiest land, by the way, is Indonesia. Book your flights now.
(Thanks to composer John Donne for links)
A few weeks back, we received several comments in the Zulu language in response to a report about a singer who had, apparently, risen from the dead (oh, povere Luciano, when will it be your turn?).
Since neither we nor Google are fluent in Southern African dialects, we sought a translator among our international readership and one young man, within the hour, helpfully obliged.
Last night, that young man, a baritone, won the Royal Overseas League Singing Competition in London, often a stepping stone to a major career.
Our warmest congratulations to Njabulo Madlala, who has previously won the Kathleen Ferrier award and is soaring to the stars.
Read all about it here and book to hear Njabulo as quickly as you can.
Watch him here as Scarpia
and listen to this sensational rendition of a Schumann dramatic song.
Thanks to Stephen Langridge for the tip-off.
