Last Friday night, Peter Gelb announced a suspension of his lockout threat to give federal mediators a chance to save the Met. Over the weekend he agreed to open the books to an independent auditor. For the past week, a tense silence has prevailed at the Met. Talks have continued and discipline has been maintained by the three main unions so that there have been no substantive leaks.
But what now?
The week is coming to an end.
Will a deal be reached by the mediators that enables both sides to save face?
Or is it back into the bunkers?
Could go either way.
Nicholas Collon and his trendy Aurora Orchestra are going to perform Mozart’s 40th symphony from memory, in what is claimed to be a first at the Proms. Can you see the point? We can’t…
press release:
In what promises to be a unique concert experience the Aurora Orchestra and Chantage, under conductor Nicholas Collon, perform the world premiere of Benedict Mason’s Meld at the centre of an extraordinary Late Night Prom on Saturday 16 August which leaves behind many of the conventions of orchestral performance.
The concert opens with a performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 which the Aurora players will perform entirely from memory. This is thought to be the first time a whole orchestral symphony has been performed without music in the 119-year history of the Proms.
The Mozart is followed by Dobrinka Tabakova’s Spinning a Yarn, which places the rustic hurdy-gurdy alongside a solo violin.
At the heart of the programme is Benedict Mason’s Meld, a major new work for nearly 150 performers which pushes the possibilities of the Royal Albert Hall to their farthest limits. Combining music with a sense of spectacle, Meld’s extraordinary score is a tour de force of orchestral and choral theatre as much as a pioneering musical achievement. The traditional standing places for Prommers in the Arena and Gallery of the Royal Albert Hall will not be available and Prommers will be allocated seats as part of the composer’s artistic vision. Mason’s wish is that the audience approach the piece with a totally open mind.
On the death of a great composer:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott:
A musical giant who changed the country’s music landscape forever.
David Barmby, former artistic director of Melbourne’s Recital Centre:
A Sydney child, I had the privilege to spend so much time with Peter Sculthorpe talking about music in his exquisite, white Georgian cottage in Woollahra. He always drove a red MG MGB which was parked in the front garden of roses. So much of what Australian music means across the world has been because of Peter’s creative work. He was one of the first to propose that Australia should find its own voice from cultures in our geographic proximity:geographic proximity: Balinese gamelan, traditional music from Japan and especially the music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
A recent interaction was to commission Peter to compose a work for the opening of the Melbourne Recital Centre in 2009, ‘Song of the Yarra’. We spent many happy hours wondering what the Yarra River running through Melbourne looked and sounded like 250 years ago.
Apart from all of that, in the often vicious and depraved world of ‘the Arts’ in Australia, Peter was always a gentle Statesman. We all sat together in his studio, in awe, and contemplated beauty.
Ross Edwards, composer:
He stopped (Australian composition) from being a pale reflection of what was going on in Europe. He showed us the possibility of realising, even before politicians, that we were part of Southeast Asia and that is where we should take note of what was going on culturally.
Simone Young, Intendant at Staatsoper Hamburg:
Very sad news that Peter Sculthorpe has died today. I’m conducting Brahms 4 with the students of ANAM tonight and we will all be thinking of him. A monument in the history of Australian music and a great man.
Never knowingly underhyped, the media down under are going doolally over Jonas Kaufmann.
‘Greatest since Pavarotti’?
Watch.
Peter Sculthorpe, a composer who infused the western classical tradition with the indigenous sounds and ambience of his native Tasmania, has died at the age of 85.
Sculthorpe’s international breakthrough came with the first Kronos Quartet album, which placed his eighth string quartet beside works by Philip Glass, Conlon Nancarrow, Aulis Sallinen and Jimi Hendrix. He wrote 18 quartets, all told, and a Sun Music series that is regularly performed.
His distinctive sound was nurtured at Oxford University, where he studied with the Viennese exile, Egon Wellesz. He returned to Australia in 1961, defining the musical language of his country as Patrick white did its literature and Sydney Nolan its art.
He died this morning at Wolper Jewish Hospital in Woollahra.
Interview here.
The coloratura soprano Cristina Deutekom died yesterday after a fall in her home. She was 82 and was renowned for a voice of exceptional clarity and precision.
Born in Amsterdam as Christine Engel, she sang in all the great international houses opposite the top tenors of the day: Bergonzi, Gedda, Domingo, Carreras and more. She was a famous Queen of the Night and she was becoming a great Turandot when a heart attack ended her stage career in 1986. A stroke in 2004 ended her successful masterclasses.
She married a boxer.
Rest her soul.
Speight Jenkins, General Director of the Seattle Opera since 1983, is stepping down this weekend. But not before he sent the following handwritten note to his stage crews:
Research summary:
Do you thrive on adrenaline – or crumple?
Why do some performers thrive on adrenaline whilst others crumple? New research suggests that it’s to do with the performer’s behaviour: increased adrenaline sees the thrivers open their arms ready for action, while the crumplers close them up in fear.
Scientists from the University of Birmingham dotted the left arms of performing cellists with tiny reflective discs, so that motion-capture cameras could monitor the angles of their left elbows as they played. Special ear-clips simultaneously measured their heart rate, so indicating their adrenaline level.
The data showed that all 24 cellists had much higher heart rates when performing in public compared with when performing alone. But different players displayed different behaviour during this adrenaline rush, according to how anxious they felt.
The faster the non-anxious players’ hearts beat the more open were their elbows. They were adrenaline thrivers, and the more open elbows better enabled them to reach high notes in the music they were playing. In contrast, the faster the anxious players’ hearts were beating the more closed their elbows became – they crumpled under adrenaline.
These findings back up the idea that an adrenaline-charged performer is not necessarily experiencing stage fright – for those who thrive on adrenaline it’s quite the opposite.
Writing in Frontiers Psychology the researchers suggest that stage-induced adrenaline symptoms like racing heart and sweaty palms should be termed ‘performance arousal’, arousal which in some is associated with the performance taking flight. It is only when performance arousal is accompanied by elements of frightened behaviour, such as closing up elbows in arm withdrawal, and the experience of dread that high adrenaline levels are a symptom of stage fright, they claim.
Co-author Alan Wing says: “This study is important in exploring the nature of performance anxiety using advanced analysis techniques in a realistic musical context. Future research should seek to generalize the findings, for example, to other instruments.”
Co-author Adrian Bradbury adds: “We would also be interested to see if these behavioural findings are replicated in other disciplines, for example sport. And it would be fascinating to judge performance anxiety therapies by testing their success rates using this motion-capture technology.”
“This excerpt (without sound) is a representation of data collected during the performance of one of the participants. The ball top left represents sweat levels (galvanic skin response) – the redder the ball the more sweat on the fingers of the cellist. The red box top right represents the participant’s Heart Rate. The skeleton is a reconstruction of the cellist’s movements as detected by the motion capture technology. The music the participant was playing is shown bottom right.”
Jan Nuchelmans, 64, co-founder and director of the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht from 1982 to 1999, has been sacked as artistic director of the Dordrecht Bach Festival, according to a report in NRC Handelsblad. A rough translation follows.
“This is very hard – I am totally baffled ‘
The artistic director of the Bach Festival Dordrecht is fired. The Board finds that he no longer functions properly after a stroke in 2012.
The reason for his resignation has not yet got through to the man who was co-founder of the Utrecht Early Music Festival. He worked for the biennialfestival Dordrecht since the first edition in 2010 Nuchelmans think it is looking for a different profile. But the festival itself mentions another reason. “It is not appropriate to burden the efforts associated with a festival to him,” says CEO Jannie van der Loos. “He can not do it anymore.”
In November 2012 Nuchelmans suffered a brain hemorrhage. His left arm is paralyzed, as his left leg. He can only walk short distances. Mental arithmetic became difficult.
“They think I can not handle great emotions,” he says at home in Utrecht. He points to his head. “I have a mobility limitation, yes, but that does not mean it does not work here. I am totally baffled. ”
Do you understand why you were fired?
“No.. They are too vague. They say they want me to stay involved as a consultant. I recently sent a proposal for the new artistic profile, they didn’t talk about ir. That could mean that they do not coincide with mine. In the previous edition, the number of visitors fell against. But that’s not something you now can change. “…
Van der Loos said in response to have “deep respect” for Nuchelmans. “We have two years taken the time to look at how its healing process would go,” she says. He would not give examples of dysfunction. “It just did not work anymore. This is for all dramatic. “
The US whistleblower, granted an extra year’s asylum in Moscow, celebrated with a visit to the opera – The Tsar’s Bride, at the Bolshoi.
He passed mostly unnoticed, having shed his spectacles and worn a dark jacket.
Snowden betrayed classified US information in protest at US surveillance of citizens. In Russia, everyone knows, there is no such surveillance.
Susan Bender, who has worked with Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Yuri Temirkanov, Simon Rattle. Phillippe Entremont and others, wrote a letter to the New York Times about the injustice that is being done to the Met’s musicians. She makes some valid points, not raised elsewhere. The Times wouldn’t publish the letter. So we will.
It’s not the fault of the unions
As we approach the deadline between the Met and their unions it is time for concerned opera lovers to weigh in on some of the issues that are currently haunting negotiations.
Grand Opera, as enjoyed by opera lovers at the Met, is the result of a collaboration of artistic entities that strive to do their collective best to present live performances of the highest caliber.
Some years ago, when Peter Gelb, the General Manager of the Met, arrived at the opera company, he wanted to use HD Performances to provide subsidiary income which was meant to, supposedly, increase the public appreciation of the art form. Yet, HD performances, while
convenient, do not present the art form at its best.
Any opera lover can tell you – Opera is meant to be seen on a stage and heard live! It is to be experienced with the best singers in their respective roles and to be accompanied by the best orchestra to convey the musical intentions of the composer.
In some cases, composers were also involved in stagings and direction of productions. No great composer like Mozart, Verdi, Wagner or
Puccini ever intended for opera to be seen on a screen with vocal and orchestral scores limited to the speaker capability of a movie theater. Nor did they think that the director of the drama or a set designer should take precedence over the music. Yet, this is what has happened over the past years to the fabulous Metropolitan Opera in New York.
I assert that these new productions were planned with the intention of increasing the income stream through the HD productions. Hopefully, a subsidiary aim was the thought that new productions will attract ticket buyers in the house. BUT to achieve these HD presentations action needs to be centralized and thus the action on the largest stage in the world has been contracted. To continue the income stream are we bound to a constant flow of new productions to provide it? Are any past HD productions going to be viewed again? Is there any income from that?
I wish that HD were as great a force for the current viewer. Instead, the viewer probably thinks that what he got for the price of a movie ticket is what they would get from a live performance. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sound quality cannot be imagined unless you have been in the opera house. Why else would performing arts institutions worldwide be so focused on acoustics.
So, I now ask, why is the Met spending all this money on new productions instead of directing it to the music making? The Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera is one of the finest in the world. One should recognize that musicians are able to move on – in other words, get a job elsewhere. Singers enjoy singing with the Met Orchestra and Maestri enjoy conducting it. Likewise, the wonderful chorus and stagehands who can handle anything!!
What was wrong with the fabulous collection of Zeffirelli productions? The Tosca of today is a paltry substitute for the former production. Likewise La Traviata. We now have matching upholstery and costumes, surely not the atmosphere Verdi intended. I am frightened to think what the new Der Rosenkavalier will look like.
Really, the people in charge of what is going on at the Met need to get their heads on straight. It’s simple math. If they have overspent on HD then try cutting the number of new productions. If the contractual obligations prevent that right now, then set a time limit and cut new productions after that. Perhaps, the Met could allow those of us who attend the Opera a chance to choose which productions we would like to see. So, you could have a series of old productions and a couple of the new productions. If the previous union obligations need to be changed then that is a separate negotiation. It is not the unions of the orchestra, chorus, and stage hands etc that spent the money on new productions. It was the management that made those decisions. How many more new productions are we going to see? Are the current HD productions able to provide income stream or, are we only going to continue repeating the formula of new productions each season?
Unfortunately, ego is winning the battle at the Met right now and it’s time for Peter Gelb and the board to choose – what is our Met going to be in the next 10 years. A Hollywood studio or the home of the greatest opera company in the world? It’s time to pay the artists and the production team what they deserve and keep putting on great opera.
—
Susan Bender
Former VP External Affairs, Manhattan School of Music
The Met has reached agreement with the 32BJ SEIU union representing security guards, office staff and other auxiliaries.
The Met had sought a five-year wage freeze, with reduced pensions and health plans. The new deal increases wages by 5.5 percent over five years.
A Met spokesman said it would save the company 3 percent, or $1m, over its previous deal.
This is still small beer. The deals to watch are the musicians, the chorus and the stagehands.
