* Returning 2013 NYO-USA Member

** New State / Territory represented in 2014 NYO-USA

NYO-USA US Tour—Summer 2014

July 20      Performing Arts Center; Purchase, NY

July 22      Carnegie Hall; New York City, NY

July 24      Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood; Lenox, MA

July 26      Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts; Boone, NC

July 28      Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park; Chicago, IL

July 30      Walk Festival Hall; Teton Village, WY

August 2   Weill Hall, Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center; Rohnert Park, CA

August 4   Walt Disney Concert Hall; Los Angeles, CA

It’s… Laura Marzadori! And she’s just 25!

Laura studied in Bologna and Cremona, has worked up to now in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Sources close to the process say she will fill the role for a trial period, before a confirmatory vote is taken.

Our social secretary reports the birth of a baby girl for Ladino heritage singer Yasmin Levy, who plays a prominent part in my forthcoming series, Music and the Jews.

Mazal tov to the fabulous Yasmin and to her wonderful mother, Cochava, who features as the first singing voice in the series.

CNN counts 15 eye-catchers, including most of the obvious moderns and none of the oldies (Musikverein, the art-deco marvels in Stockholm, Paris and Liverpool). Click here for gallery.

The only UK venue is the Sage at Gateshead. London’s detractions are too blatant to discuss.

Alan Turing was the genius who cracked the German Enigma code and helped to win the Second World War. He died by his own hand after persecution by the British authorities for his sexual activities. In this aspect, as in others, Turing was ahead of his time: he saw no issue or shame in being homosexual and took no measures to conceal his encounters which were, at the time, illegal. He was, and remains, by any definition – a hero.

James McCarthy’s Codebreaker, sung by Hertfordshire Chorus with David Temple,  premieres at London’s Barbican Hall, Saturday 26th April. Watch, listen, reflect. Just as Turing did at Bletchley.

The German magazine Opernwelt has announced a new Gerard Mortier award to recognise artists who contribute to the renewal of opera.

Michael Eckerle, Organist and Kantor of St. Franziskus, Pforzheim, collapsed and died on Friday of a heart attack. He was some weeks short of his 50th birthday. Eckerle, a considerable virtuoso, toured widely in Europe and the US.

The conductor Jesús López Cobos has launched an appeal against the court ruling that he was not slandered by Gerard Mortier and the Real Theatre over the ending of his period as music director.

The lower court ruled that a conductor, as a public figure, should be prepared to accept different opinions and a degree of criticism.

The maestro, evidently, disagrees. He insists it’s a matter of honour.

The picture popped up this weekend on the Minnesota musicians’ facebook page. Do they know something we don’t?

On Friday the board met to decide whether to fire Michael Henson and/or rehire Osmo Vänskä. The two options are mutually exclusive. A decision appears to have been taken but nothing has yet been announced.

This picture may be the first harbinger of Minnesota spring.

The more I hear, the more I am convinced that Mieczyslaw Weinberg deserves to be ranked with the other two giants of the 20th century. Gidon Kremer feels much the same. His new double-release is my Album of the Week on sinfini.com

Click here to read.

Manuela Hoelterhoff is an unhappy opera bunny. Each time she goes to the Met in the line of duty, her heart sinks deeper into her Jimmy Choos at the lack of consumer comforts and general progress at her regular place of worship.

What’s to be done? Manuela, who has probably seen more Met operas than any New York critic, has offered ten improvement ideas on the Bloomberg site. Nine of them are commonsense. The tenth is totally radical. Manuela is the first to break a taboo about the sacrosanct music director. It deserves to be widely discussed.

Read the full article here. The ten tips follow:

1. Open the Met an hour before, not half an hour, so people

can mingle.

2. Morph the useless and unloved gallery into a bar.

3. Turn the souvenir shop into a media center showcasing

material from the company’s huge archives and information on new

productions. Move the press room from its dim hole by the

bathrooms and provide seating for visitors to tweet. There’s

hardly any old-style press left anyway.

4. Get rid of the overpriced Grand Tier restaurant, which

blights a huge swathe of territory underneath one of the two

murals by Chagall. Have designer David Rockwell and Chef Marcus

Samuelsson create a casual dining space with bar tables and

sofas that flows across to the other Chagall.

5. Drop that pompous “no seating once the performance

starts” ukase. This is a place of entertainment. Every act has

a moment that is less sacred than others.

Sippy Cup

6. Permit drinks inside like the Brooklyn Academy of Music

and most New York theaters. For a long show in cramped seats, a

sippy cup can be your friend.

7. Expand and encourage the use of a free coat check. The

auditorium often looks like a refugee center.

8. In nice weather, fill that loggia with bars on both ends

and students from Juilliard next door playing operatic

transcriptions that drift enticingly to pedestrians below.

9. Start performing on Sundays. Is there another opera

company or theater that shuts down on Sunday to please unions?

10. Hire a charismatic music director to articulate a

vision for the future and excite a new generation. James Levine,

here since 1971, has never become a public personality

identified with New York. What is wrong with “emeritus”? The

Met needs a visible, socially engaged leader to supplement

general manager Peter Gelb. We need someone like Gustavo Dudamel

in Los Angeles or Riccardo Muti in Chicago. It’s time for a

change.

(Manuela Hoelterhoff is an executive editor at Bloomberg

News. All opinions are her own.)