Friends and colleagues have reacted with shock and dismay at the death of Tommaso Zuccon Ghiotto, a talented violinist from Vicenza, who was found dead over the weekend at his home in via Napoli.
He was 27.
Tommaso had won an audition to play in Enrico Morricone’s Sinfonietta Italiana.
After studies at the Zurich conservatoire, he was entering international competitions and achieving good placements. At this stage, there is no known cause for his death.
Our sympathies to his loved ones.
Samuel Tan, from Singapore, took first prize in the 2014 Andrea Postacchini International Violin Competition in Italy. He beat 130 violinists from 39 countries, aged up to 35.
His parents explain how, in first interview here.
His success will reignite the debate over the value, standards and impartiality of many international competitions.
During the catastrophic stage glitch that forced her to clear the Festpielhaus 20 minutes into opening night, Katharina Wagner sought to placate the media with details of her next few seasons.
2015 Nothing new.
2016 The director Jonathan Meese, who has faced criminal charges for incitement, has pledged not to introduce Nazi symbols in Parsifal.
2017 Barrie Kosky, director of Berlin’s Komische Opera, will stage Meistersinger. He’s ambivalent about Bayreuth but says ‘there’s no escaping Wagner’. Kosky is thought to be the first Aussie to direct on the Green Hill (a breakthrough oddly unreported by Aussie media)
2018 New Lohengrin with Anna Netrebko as Elsa
2019 New Tannhäuser, conducted by ‘young international maestro’
2020 New Ring, probably conducted by Thielemann.
There you have it. No more surprises.
Eleonore Büning, the doyenne music critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has blasted Bayreuth with a shock discovery.
For the first time, there are empty spaces in the Festspielhaus. It’s not just Chancellor Angela Merkel who is staying away this year. So are many others who scored (and paid for) a ticket in the online lottery – and then didn’t bother to show up. Tickets can be found on the web.
Year upon year of shlock productions and weak management have alienated the audience, concludes Ms Büning. Read her here (auf Deutsch).
A revolutionary procedure at the Mayo Clinic for a very courageous schoolgirl, Mara Reed, from Minnesota.
KMSP-TV
