During the 15 months of the Minnesota Orchestra’s lockout of its musicians, some new shoots sprouted. Students and schoolchildren, irked by the terrible silence, formed Young Musicians of Minnesota and went around playing and campaigning for a resumption of concerts.

They wrote to the musicians, telling them how much they were missed. They formed a flashmob outside the building where the Minnesota board were meeting. They kept the music alive.

And their efforts did not end when the ice melted and the music returned: This summer, YMM held a music festival, free to advanced music students looking for a performance opportunity. Now with 72 students, up from last summer’s 46, the youth orchestra rehearsed for four hours on Sundays, with members coming from as far away as Rochester and Owatonna. They’ll perform their summer finale concert this Friday, with music by Wagner, Glazunov and Tchaikovsky.

Lovely report from Minnesota by Pamela Espeland. Read it here.

ymm-group-shot_main

 

The death has been announced of Dick Wagner, guitarist and songwriter for Alice Cooper, Lou Reed and Aerosmith. He was 71.

 

DickWagner

Some ideas are so glaringly obvious, you wonder why they don’t catch on. Gustav Kuhn is performing the complete Ring as a weekend holiday package in the Tirol. Rheingold on Friday night, the rest over Saturday and Sunday. Read here (auf Deutsch). Tickets still on sale.

wagner weekend

 

Russian media are reporting a small, hostile reception that greeted the ballet company at Saratoga Springs, where it retreated after a two-week residency at Lincoln Center. The Saratoga demonstrators said they plan to turn out for all Bolshoi performances until August 1.

saratoga_ukrain-325x216

 

Ron Cohen Mann left New York for Montreal to spend the summer with a local orchestra. He tells Slipped Disc:

‘I had just played a concert with L’Orchestre de la Francophonie at Place des Arts in Montreal and was having a snack at the Café when I noticed that my backpack with my oboe was no longer at my side. I was in shock.’

The oboe is worth $10,000. Ron is offering a $1,000 reward.

The oboe is a Lorée Royal 125 oboe (grenadilla with gold-plated posts and reedwell, silver keys and rods) serial number SM73, with reeds, tools, music, and iPad.


It was taken between 16h25-17h10 on 27 July at the Café and Crêpes, Quartier des spectacles, Montreal, Canada.

If you have information, please email: contact@oboeron.com

 

oboe-ron-2

 

A day and a bit before deadline, the Met weakened. After one union, Agma, proposed a less confrontational form of bargaining, the Met suggested calling in the the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service – provided other unions join in.

Mediation would get both sides off the hook and save Gelb’s career from the legacy of a lockout. This is the first good news from the Met for months.

metropolitan-opera exterior

 

 

This is the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari that has been making all the headlines about using Google Glass in a one-off Turandot in Sardinia. We’ve never seen them on stage, but they look pretty fit – and sound pretty good – on the beach.

 

(If the video does not pop out, click on the word ‘Post’  above.)

turandot

The ‘Molitor’ Stradivarius, which has been played in the past by Elmar Oliveira and Anne-Akiko Meyers is being loaned by present owner Maxim Viktorov to the Luxembourg-based virtuoso, Alena Baeva. She gets to play it for a year.

Viktorov has a collection of ten instruments which include the so-called ‘Ex-Paganini’ violin by Carlo Bergonzi and the ‘Ex-Vieuxtemps’ violin by Guarneri del Gesu. (source: Ingles & Hayday).

alena baeva

photo (c) Victor Eskenasy

The soprano Latonia Moore, who sang a stupendous last-minute Met Aida in 2012, has announced she’s getting married in a fortnight, and that she’s starting a family. The whole opera world is thrilled for her.

Latonia was due to reprise Aida in New York at Christmas, but that now seems unlikely – even if the Met is up and running by then.

 

latonia-moore_by_susies.genii-250x380

UPDATE: Message to Slipped Disc from Latonia: ‘Who says I’m not singing my Aida performances!? Do you know when I’m due, sir? Exactly.’

The maestro’s latest thoughts on the Middle East (auf Deutsch).

Read here.

 

barenboim chris2

The church organ of the  Marktkirche in Wiesbaden has been severely damaged by a lightning strike. Built in 1863, the organ was played by the composer Max Reger and the humanitarian Albert Schweizer, both of whom lived in the town. 

And for those who believe it never happens, this is the second time lightning has struck the church in the past four years.

Reger organ

The Met manager will have breakfasted with a smile this morning over Maureen Dowd’s mini-profile in the New York Times. The doyenne columnist, a Times protegée of his father’s, wrote fondly, almost maternally, of the embattled opera manager.

Maureen Dowd

 

 

Peter Gelb will have stopped reading before he got to any critical comment. As a former PR man, he mistrusts journalists and never believes hat he reads unless it is totally fawning.

Nor does his listen to his own PR advisers, making one blunder after another in his public utterances these past few weeks.

What Peter Gelb believes in is Peter Gelb. And that faith is about to be sorely tested.

Unless he can reach some form of agreement with the unions in the next 36 hours – a prospect as remove as an Israel-Hamas love-in – Peter Gelb will lock all unions members out of the Metropolitan Opera and shut it down for the forseeable future.

The outlook beyond that does not look good for Gelb. If the unions force him to climb down after weeks or months of shutdown, he’s finished. If he manages to bring them to heel, the Met that he will manage after the lockout will be – like the Minnesota Orchestra – a restive, unhappy company that will only be appeased – as in Minnesota – by the blood of its manager.

Either way, Peter Gelb will be toast. He has 36 hours to get himself out of the open fire.