Jubilation at Austrian TV as the second channel ratings came in. Last Friday’s screening of the Salzburg Rosenkavalier on ORF2 was watched by 503,000 viewers.

At peak time, it had nine percent of the total viewing figures.

Could any other country match that?

Franz Welser-Most conducted, Brian Large produced for TV.

The tenor-turned-baritone has pulled out of Salzburg with a serious and painful illness. What do the media have to say about it?

Great, we’re getting a real baritone. Poor taste, even by near-inimitable Austrian tabloid standards.

Message frrom Placido Domingo:

Thank you so much for all the concern regarding my health and my recent cancellations. I am on my way to NYC for some rest and a medical check up. Then off to LA for a new and exciting new edition of Operalia and rehearsals of La Traviata !

Attorneys are writing the small print on the new agreements as these words go live. The stage unions have yet to reach agreement, but both within the negotiating rooms and around the music business there is growing recognition and some degree of amazement at the scale of Peter Gelb’s defeat.

That he climbed down a few percentage points on pay cuts is no big deal. These things happen across a green baize table. That he made lockout threats he was unable to keep is a graver sign of weakness: Gelb has shot the biggest weapon he’s got and won’t be taken seriously in future.

But allowing the unions oversight of major financial decisions and a say in future investments amounts to a surrender of a vital management asset. Opera bosses around the world are, they tell Slipped Disc, rubbing their eyes in disbelief. One said: He lost the confidence of his musicians and singers and had to give away the crown jewels to regain a measure of respect. ‘All this,’ said another, ‘in exchange for a minuscule cut.’

Gelb is incredibly fortunate in having a group of musicians who want only the best for the Met. A more militant group would have made him pay a much heavier price for his empty-barrelled ebullience.

The celebrated teacher has launched a contest in the name of his teacher, Boris Goldstein. It will take place in Bern, next January. Details here.

The stage unions go back into talks with the Met this morning, having offered a five-year wage freeze which Met manager Peter Gelb peremptorily rejected.

Expect him to climb down once more.

He demanded 16-17% cuts from the orchestra and chorus and settled for 3.5 percent now, 3.5 percent later. No huge pain for the musicians, but huge gain.

They have won the right to be party to major spending decisions, limiting Gelb’s powers as manager and probably shortening his time in office.

“The contract includes an unprecedented mechanism for greater financial oversight of the Met’s spending going forward,” said Jessica Phillips Rieske, chair of the orchestra committee. “We hope it will lead to better collaboration in pursuit of real efficiencies.”

Jessica is a heroine of this dispute: reasoned, and firm in her resolve.

The Gelb autocracy is over. He survives with fewer teeth and much less public credit, having yielded almost every point he tried to secure.

His PR will try to present Peter Gelb as a reasonable man, a conciliator.

In fact, it was the desperate measure of calling in a federal conciliator to solve the dispute that saved him from the consequences of his previous actions. Gelb the noisy cannon has become Gelb the liability.

Holly Mulcahy, concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra has been reflecting on last week’s TV advert for the St Louis Symphony, which did not necessarily reflect the product in the best light. Here’s Holly’s take:

In today’s television advertising world, we see orchestras being used regularly to sell products from beverages to airlines, cars to computers. Orchestras have been portrayed as refined and or snobby to sell posh lifestyles and products or the butt of jokes to make an ironic point….all in the name of selling a product. That’s fine for the companies selling their products but it makes it twice as difficult to sincerely invite people to buy tickets to an enjoyable and meaningful orchestra concert experience. But usually when orchestras film commercials to sell themselves they often miss their target.

How do you sell something that can’t be taken home, eaten, worn, or driven? You sell the experience. But how orchestras see the experience is vastly different from how an audience or potential audience sees the experience. In almost all orchestra commercials or Youtube.com spots, the focus is on the orchestra and or conductor, rarely the audience.

This typical approach gets the music played, the musician and conductor action shots taken, and a general idea of some of the stars that might be seen at any given concert. But there has to be a more descriptive narrative to engage the viewer.

Absolutely show the orchestra doing what it does best, but show the audience! Show the audience enjoying the concert, show them wistful while listening to music, show the applause, show the immediate standing ovations, and most definitely follow the lead of what Hollywood does: show the exiting audience and let them speak. Nothing could be more powerful than a paying customer sharing how they just were moved by a performance.

Not that an orchestra is like a cruise ship company or airline, but think of how those industries share the experience to their target audiences. There are the pilots, the helpful staff, the shipboard amenities, but most importantly, there are the passengers who appear to be happy and enjoying themselves. You immediately identify with the couple on vacation, or you identify with the family taking in a show after a day of shipboard activities. You identify with the customers and their experiences enjoying themselves more than anything else.

Music is mighty on its own, but playing with people’s image of themselves enjoying something is a powerful tipping point.

During Season One of the hit series Mad Men, Eastman Kodak approached the fictional advertising firm at Madison Avenue with their newest product, “The Wheel,” a picture projector that never jams. The company wanted to show how great it was that it never jammed and figured that should be enough. But the main character of the show, Donald Draper, skillfully took the Kodak people down a path they didn’t expect and created a whole new approach for this product. Here is the scene:

This is just a mere example of how a perspective is shifted to the customer’s point of view. Suddenly a simple idea is shifted into an interesting narrative and it instantly makes it tangible, relative, and possible. I wonder if shifting perspective to show just how a live orchestral experience could be enjoyed would be a more powerful selling point than just the orchestra alone.

The Russian-born violinist picks his time for a solidarity act.

press release:

In the next month in Israel’s leading concert hall the Charles Brofman (Heichal Ha’Tarbut) Masim Vengerov will inaugurate the festival playing chamber works with Israeli pianist Shira Shaked, conducting and playing with the Swiss Menuhin Academy Chamber Orchestra, playing as a soloist of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with his teacher and friend conductor Vag Papian at the helm and Vengerov doubling as violinist and conductor in Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Sheherazade. The last two works with the Israeli Opera Orchestra the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon Lezion.

Musicians of the Metropolitan Opera reached a tentative deal with the company several hours after the deadline expired. Judging by the responses of individual members it is a much better deal than the 16% pay cut demanded by Peter Gelb.

Here’s the union statement:

New York, New York—Monday, August 18, 2014—The musicians of the Met Orchestra and their union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, announced that they have reached a tentative agreement with the Metropolitan Opera.

Said Tino Gagliardi, president of the Associated Musicians of Greater New York, Local 802, AFM, which represents the MET Orchestra musicians, “After many hours of deliberation, today we have reached a tentative agreement which is subject to the approval of Local 802’s executive board and ratification by the MET Orchestra Musicians.”

And this from Billy Short, principal bassoon:

Against all odds, our amazing committee (led by the indefatigable Jessica Phillips Rieske) reached a tentative agreement early this morning. I’m in awe and profoundly grateful for their tireless work.

Look at it any way you like. The musicians won every argument. Gelb did not. Happily, all agreed to step back from the brink of disaster.

The Met’s statement:

We are pleased to announce that earlier this morning the Met successfully reached new agreements with the Met orchestra and chorus. The company has extended the deadline through midnight on Tuesday, August 19, to allow Local One and the other remaining unions with unsettled contracts more time to secure new deals with the institution. We remain hopeful that the company’s 2014–15 season will open on schedule. Thank you for your support of the Met.

The septuagenarian singer is suffering from a bladder infection, accompanied by a respiratory tract disorder. He is running a high fever.

The Polish baritone Artur Rucinski takes over his role for the rest of Il Trovatore.

We wish Placido a swift and pain-free recovery.

By his own threat, Peter Gelb should have imposed a lockout several hours ago. The fact that he hasn’t suggests that both sides are in a post-deadline huddle to avert disaster. Both are observing radio silence.

Musicians have been told to check at given times with a recorded message on their union line to learn whether or not they should turn up for work.

We hear that Rafael Payare, chief conductor of the Ulster Orchestra has been approached by the Vienna Philharmonic to take over three concerts in January 2015 from the late Lorin Maazel. Concerts are 17 & 18 January in Vienna and 20 January in Paris. 

Payare, in his early 30s is married to the international cellist Alisa Weilerstein.

Today is the Met’s deadline for reaching a wage agreement with musicians, or locking them out.

Dr Gerald Stein, a Chicago psychotherapist and www.slippedisc.com contributor, is a passionate, lifelong concertgoer. He is involved with music and musicians in his community. But Dr Stein has some chilling fears about the replaceability of the orchestra in the immediate technological future.

We don’t share his conclusions, but the advance of robotic music needs to be addressed and the case for live music vigorously restated. Here’s Dr Stein’s sample scenario. Read the full text here.

Imagine a generous donor purchasing loudspeakers, the computer, musical notation software, and the (automated Vienna Symphonic Library (one time expenses) for a small community with a decent auditorium, thus enabling staged operas. There exists a plethora of talented young singers and competent conductors of high school, college ensembles, and community orchestras. We are not talking James Levine or Riccardo Muti here, of course.

A digital orchestra reduces costs after the original outlay by our hypothetical donor. Goldstein’s long effort to enter the notes into the software for his “Ring cycle,” once done, needn’t be done again. Of course, he would have to be willing to sell his work product for an affordable price or simply give it away. Alternatively, several small communities could band together to pay whatever price Mr. Goldstein would set, or hire someone to do the job of entering the notes for an agreed upon opera. From that point, it could be widely and cheaply shared among them, as digital music commonly is today.

The cost of such an arrangement would be far less than hiring an orchestra and paying a major conductor tens of thousands of dollars per performance. Still, the result would be both poorer and different, at least until robots and androids are far more developed than they are now; replacements, that is, for some or all of the musicians!

Did I say robots and androids? The latter are robots designed to resemble humans. I’ll get to androids in a moment. Nonetheless, we are already in the world of the “second machine age.” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, two MIT professors, elaborate in their book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

Your thoughts, please?