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The French political establishment paid tribute to a great director at the church of Saint-Sulpice. Details here.

Waltraud Meier sang Wagner’s Im Treibhaus and Träume (Rêves) in memory of one of the great Ring directors, followed by a reading of a Shakespeare sonnet.

E. Randol Schoenberg, grandson of the great composer and a lawyer specialising in restitution of art stolen by the Nazis, has drawn our attention to a Klimt portrait in the current National Gallery show,  “Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900.”.

The portrait is of Amalie Zuckerkandl, member of a newspaper family with whom Gustav Mahler was notably friendly. It was given by Amalie to her friend, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, another Mahler acquaintance, and was stolen from him by the Nazis when he was forced to flee Austria in 1938.

The Austrian authorities have refused claims to return it to the legitimate owners. Randol Schoenberg has posted the family’s case for restitution here. It’s a powerful case. The National Gallery should search its conscience.

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We have been informed that Andrew Thompson, contrabassoonist and bassoonist for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, has died suddenly of a heart attack aged 27. He was reportedly with friends at the time. They described him as ‘a home-grown, world-class talent’. Here’s the notice.

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Television tributes here:

The Paris instrument maker Frédéric Levi has been following with professional interest the story of Wallace Hartley’s violin that supposedly went down with the Titanic. M Levi does not dispute the various tests that have been carried out on the instrument over the past seven years, but he poses a simple question:  why has the object not been presented for examination to a qualified luthier?

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M Levi has been in touch with the auctioneers and told them that he finds various inconsistencies with the story of the violin – the state of preservation, tempering of the  varnish and more.

He adds that, in his experience, immersion in water would not cause cracks on the front , and that traces of glue suggest  attempts at repair that were not connected to any immersion. His concerns add a further dimension of doubt.

The mass media, meanwhile, continue to repeat unfounded claims and speculative values.

 

 

He may have presided over the collapse of City Opera, but New York’s super-rich are not letting George Steel go without a party. It’s being given by donor Rita Mehos and it’s so private no-one is allowed to say they’ve been invited.

Slipped Disc’s informant has declined to attend.

Last one to leave turns out the lights.

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Our mole in the box-office says the season is not selling well.

Onegin and Norma are selling out and James Levine’s return in Cosi fan tutte has guaranteed a strong house. But the more adventurous stuff – Two Boys, The Nose and Midsummer’s Night Dream – are selling so slowly they are going for discounts.

The economy is taking its toll. Individuals are buying fewer tickets in half-season batches.

For the season so far, the Met is playing at 65%, we hear. That may explain why Peter Gelb has mislaid his usual cheery smile.

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An interview with Dave Porter, who wrote the soundtrack for the cult TV series, reveals that he started out – like so many others – in the Philip Glass studio, mastering the frugal craft of repetition. Read here.

Nico Muhly, whose Two Boys is about to be staged at the Met, is another Glass protégé. The influence is everywhere.

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Sympathy, please, for Hannah Lash, teacher at Yale and composer in residence at the Alabama Symphony, whose entire output vanished into thin air when a thief broke into her car three years ago and stole her computer.

No back-up? Maybe she didn’t need one.

Hannah has written a new piece out of the disaster. It’s called Violations: The Loading Dock Project, for eight singers and instrumentalists.

Read more here.

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Trials and tribulations of a travelling pianist of our distant acquaintance: the Steinway song.

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A spat has erupted on Slipped Disc over one of our contributors who went to the Metropolitan Opera bearing the first of the seasonal catarrhs. It was no excuse, readers felt, that the opera he attended was called The Nose.  If you’ve got a cold, keep it to yourself is the accepted etiquette.

But do we? Which of us has cancelled a flight after coughing all night? The confined space of an aircraft is a worse spreader of germs than the vastness of the Met.

Which of us has been blamed for not turning up to work because we had a cold?

And don’t we applaud singers on being told that they are going ahead with their performance despite having a touch of flu?

There seems to be widespread confusion about what to do with a cold when you’ve got tickets for the opera. Slipped Discers, what’s your best advice?

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