The Met manager is the subject of 60 Minutes this Sunday on CBS.
He plays the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. Sample:
The man trying to reinvigorate opera at its American temple in New York, says it’s a battle he wages every day to keep the centuries-old art form from dying a bloody death… “I go in every day to the Met, knowing that…there is a battle to be…fought for the survival of this art form.”
Hmmmm…
It plays. It displays. It does everything but compose. Read here.
At a concert in Gothenburg Concert Hall on October 23, 2013, Christian Zacharias stopped playing in the middle of Haydn’s Piano Concerto, after a phone went off in the audience. The faces of the orchestral players are a study in horror, affront and incomprehension.
UPDATE: Want to know what happened next? Click here.
It’s no secret that she’s a fan. She watches Roger Federer play whenever they’re in the same town.
Now Anne-Sophie Mutter has been specific about her admiration for the tennis maestro. ‘He has a terrific bowing arm,’ she says. ‘I am fascinated by its lightness, its elegance. He is a great athlete and an admirable man.’
Federer, for his part, adores the violin.
Read here.
The Free University of Berlin has bestowed its highest honour on the Staatsoper conductor in recognition of his efforts to bridge the Middle East conflict with his West-East Diwan Orchestra.
Unknown vandals have desecrated the grave of the Austrian composer Cesar Bresgen in Großgmain, days before what would have been his 100th birthday. A headboard and flowers were removed. The police are investigating.
Bresgen, who died in 1988, became a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg after the War and a respected member of the Austrian musical establishment. Between 1936 and 1945, he composed and arranged hundreds of songs for Nazi organisations, including the SS.
Video report here.
They think it can in Sweden, where this
has been supplanted by this:
To our eyes, the little dicky-bird infantilises the audience, but the experts think it w2orks. Read on here.
Among the daily toll of human tragedies, this tale of two close friends on a night out in Camden is unusually poignant for its incongruities. The cause of death is undetermined. Read the full story here.
Valery Gergiev presided, as arranged at the opening production of the $280 million opera house built by the Kazakh dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
So far, so unsurprising. Gergiev likes rich dictators. But what’s this in the press release? ‘Astana Opera has signed preliminary co-production agreements with the Rome Opera and one of the leading opera houses of the world, Covent Garden.
Really? Are we not a little fastidious about dealing with tyrants?
Other opera houses working with the Kazakhs are: Opera South Africa, Shanghai Grand, Lyric Opera of Singapore, the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet of Bulgaria, the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre.
