The prestigious Belgian contest is down to the last 12 singers. Seven are continental Europeans. The other five are from the Far East.

Anti-Anglo bias among the judges?

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Here’s the list:

Jodie Devos (Belgium, pictured)

Emoke Baráth (Hngary)

Sarah Laulan (France)

Hyesang Park (South Korea)

Chiara Skerath (Switzerland)

Hansung Yoo (South Korea)

Sumi Hwang (South Korea)

Seung Jick Kim (South Korea)

Sheva Tehoval (Belgium)

Yu Shao (China)

Levente Pall (Rumania)

Daniela Gerstenmeyer (Germany)

We have been informed of the death in Montreal of Franz-Paul Decker, who was music director of many orchestras around the world,

Starting at Bochum ((1956–1964), he led the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra  (1962–1967), Montreal Symphony Orchestra (1967–1975), the Barcelona (1985–1991), and New Zealand (1991–1996) symphony orchestras.

Much of his secondary activity was in Canada where he served as Artistic Advisor to the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (1975–1977) and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He was Principal Guest Conductor in Ottawa (1991–1999) and Edmonton  (2003–2004).

He made a considerable number of recordings, latterly on the Naxos label and was renowned as an interpreter of late-romantic composers, especially Richard Strauss. Our sympathies to his family. Death notice here.


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The Cato Insitute has published an annual update on mortal misery.

Hungary will be happy to learn it has fallen off the misery index.

The five unhappiest countries in 2014 are:

1 Venezuela

venezuela violence

2 Iran

3 Serbia

4 Argentina

5 Jamaica

6 Egypt

7 Spain

8 South Africa

9 Brazil

10 Greece

 

A new production of Fidelio opens this weekend at the Volksoper. Der Standard has an interview with its conductor.

Why does Julia Jones so seldom get noticed at home?

 

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Rupert Christiansen (pictured) has defended his right to insult singer’s body-shape in the safety of his own paper, but he’s too scared to do it on radio, live or pre-recorded.

The BBC’s World at One asked me to argue a case against critical offences. None of the offending critics was man enough to oppose it.

Shame. Nothing was ever gained by timidity.

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Back to work, then.

It’s the attorney general of the state of California and the question is whether public funds were properly handled during the period when the opera company was stumbling to near-closure. More here.

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When Grace Bumbry stepped onto the stage at Bayreuth as Venus in 1961, opera magazines and conservative media were poleaxed by perplexity. Here was a beautiful young American singer, 24 years old, appearing in Tannhäuser, opposite Victoria de los Angeles and Wolfgang Windgassen, luxury casting even by Bayreuth’s standards.

Just one problem: Grace was black. Wagner was race-pure. The media wanted to know what the hell was she doing in these hallowed halls.

The audience provided the answer. It gave Grace a half-hour standing ovation and 42 curtain calls. Game over.

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When Matthew Bourne put on an all-male Swan Lake in 1995, reactionary media gave him the same reception. Tchaikovsky wrote for ballerinas, didn’t he?

Bourne’s Swan Lake went on to become the longest-running ballet on Broadway.

Opera and ballet are all about illusion. That is why the Telegraph critic is utterly wrong when he argues: Fat and thin can be equally beautiful, but one has to make an audience believe. There are times when physical absolutes make this impossible.

Wrong, wrong and wrong again. We go to the theatre to have our preconceptions challenged. We want to see something different, to have expectations overturned. We want to hear great singers, regardless of colour, race, shape or whatever. We want the experience to override physical absolutes, as it did with Grace Bumbry, as it did with Matthew Bourne. That’s the way great art goes forward.

Rupert’s way leads only to the grave.

Michael Volpe, founder and manager of Opera Holland Park in London, shares the public and professional outrage at the critical body-weight assault on a beautiful young singer at Glyndebourne. But, in an article for Slippedisc.com, Michael (pictured right) argues that the opera industry needs to look closely at its practices. It has been guilty, he says, of ‘sexing up’ productions in pursuit of an elusive mass audience.

‘We have sought out audiences who come from a world where looks ARE everything and to some degree we have pandered to them.’

You can read his full article below. Discuss.

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I ought to tread carefully amid the body shaming sturm und drang of Glyndebourne’s Rosenkavalier . Everybody has a hair trigger, the web is alight with not just this issue but associated matters of misogyny. But I do think we need to step back one pace and examine our own industry, our practices and our attitudes. First, so that I can try to discuss the matter unfettered, a qualification; I do not believe it was, or is, appropriate to mention the singer’s body shape. I have never thought it appropriate. There. Hope that suffices.

But let us look at how things ARE, as opposed to how they should be. Over the past twenty five years, I have been deeply involved in selling the concept of opera to the masses and the overwhelming emphasis has been the elevation in the public’s mind of opera to a theatrical and “relevant” art form. The entire industry, moreover, has been at it and I have lost count of the number of articles and interviews I have read (or written) on how opera is way beyond the stereotype image of the “fat lady with a horned helmet”.  As an industry, we have been trying to sex it up for ages, acquiescing to the media demand that we prove opera isn’t anachronistic. Singers – male and female – get their kit off on stage,  in photo shoots they gaze sexily at the viewer, we salivate at the mesmerising concept of an immensely talented singer who also happens to be hot, trumpeting that “opera isn’t what you think!” We advertise operas with husband and wife leads as “opera’s hottest couple”, present productions with nudity (like this Rosenkavalier in fact), we try to be bold, challenging and above all produce shows that amplify the sexual angst and bodice-ripping of opera and the literature upon which it is often based. In opera, we are indeed obsessed with sex and sexuality and have been objectifying singers for years. OHP’s productions are far from straight-laced, but these are the facts and it is indisputable that opera has chosen to cavort with the devil; people judge us by the standards of other art forms. 

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Of course, the problem that opera has is that it is an extraordinarily specialist craft, requiring unrivalled training and ability. We demand, or we at least should demand, the finest voices. But we also tell audiences, many of them raised on popular culture, that the operatic stage offers unrivalled dramatic purpose, it is believable, it is a coruscating, emotional roller-coaster. Yet so many of those new audiences that we have tried to appeal to don’t yet realise and understand what opera demands of its exponents and we have been busy trying to tell them they can relate to it in the same way they can relate to their favourite soap.  We have sought out audiences who come from a world where looks ARE everything and to some degree we have pandered to them.

 

And what of the critics and our own industry? Are any of us unfamiliar with stories of directors who cast physically, have we not forced critics to accept the wider view that opera needs to change and  be given more room to evolve and flourish in the new (digital) world order? Are we blameless?

You see, I think we are right to be angry about the reviews in question (several critics will confirm past opprobrium from me on this matter) because they are rude and unpleasant for the singer.

What I have had trouble with are the consequent arguments positing the theory of what opera is (i.e “all about the singing, we don’t do sexy”) when it has become something else entirely. The opera industry is now fulminating over the incident and whilst all of the comment I have read seems immensely heartfelt (and the solidarity with the singer is terrific) I do find the claims that opera has nothing whatever to do with theatricality and is instead entirely about the singing a little hard to swallow.  Yes, companies should cast blind, because audiences will rarely accept an attractive but poor singer; on this we can all agree. And singers do not have to be svelte or handsome to effect believability, something that is at the heart of the matter, but we must also take umbrage when reviewers make a meal of the attractiveness of singers, we must stop chasing column inches and retweets with controversies and provocative headlines and above all, we should stop trying to dance unendingly with the digital devil and those whose entire world it is and for whom live performance experiences, let alone by good-looking performers, hardly ever features. Media will demand more of the kind of thing we saw yesterday because we have had a hand in teaching them how to behave.

 

Opera should be what opera is, what we know it can be; if we keep shifting the emphasis, if we maintain our insistence that we are relevant by aping the worst excesses of theatre, West End, youth culture and the “it” crowd,  then it won’t be people like Rupert Christiansen we have to worry about, it will be the entire audience in the theatre. If there is one, of course.

 

 (c) Michael Volpe/slippedisc.com

Rupert Christiansen has come out fighting in the Daily Telegraph. He wants you to understand why he was right to call a young singer ‘dumpy’ and to damn her physique as ‘intractable’, which could be taken to mean that she is unemployable on the opera stage.

Rupert believes that body insults are a legitimate part of the critical repertoire. Many will consider that indefensible.

You may read read his argument in full here.  Many will find them indefensible. But credit Rupert with the courage to come out into the open and engage with the issues.

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Our condolences to the Metropolitan Opera general manager on the death of his father.

Arthur Gelb, who was 90, had been an influential figure at the New York Times, where he rose from copy boy to managing editor. It was there that he met married a niece of the violinist Jascha Heifetz and became highly visible in musical circles.

Alternately charming and assertive, Arthus Gelb was vociferously accused of promoting his musical friends in the paper’s cultural pages. The assertion is repeated in an affectionate though unusually well-balanced obituary in today’s paper.

Unions at the Met, which are in dispute with Peter Gelb, have published a sympathy statement (below):

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Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Musicians and Local 802, AFM Honor the Life of Arthur Gelb, Father of General Manager Peter Gelb

May 20, 2014, New York, N.Y.—The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Musicians and Local 802, AFM wish to convey our sincere condolences to Peter Gelb and his family on the occasion of the death of his father Arthur Gelb, who changed New York City and the nation for the better, not only as a legendary newspaper editor but as a great champion of the arts. We respectfully honor his legacy, and wish his family comfort in this time of loss.