Jonathan Meese has been booked for Parsifal in 2016.
He’s notorious for flashing swastikas and Hitler salutes.
Last summer he promised not to do so at Bayreuth.
But they fired him anyway today. Financially unviable, apparently.
Ian Maclay is leaving the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. That will save them £170,000 a year.
His successor will face tougher scrutiny.
Apply here.
Bernie Ecclestone of Formula-1 thinks not.
Our other sponsor is UBS – these kids don’t care about banking. They haven’t got enough money to put in the bloody banks, anyway… I’d rather get to the 70 year-old guy who’s got plenty of cash.
Read here.
Anyone in classical music dare to agree?
The swashbuckling Thomas Middelhoff got three years for embezzlement, starting now.
A freewheeling thief, he controlled a large chunk of the book and music industries.
Read here.
William H. Scheide, a wealthy scholar and manuscript collector, has died in Princeton at a grand old age.
He taught at Cornell University and in 1946 founded the Bach Aria Group, directing it until 1980 in numerous performances and recordings.
He owned one of the world’s largest private manuscript and first-edition collections, which he has pledged to Princeton.
But we’re told that a painting of Bach discussed by Sir John Eliot Gardiner in his recent book on Bach will revert to the Bach Archive in Leipzig.
Johnny Elichaoff, a support drummer for U2 and manager of Tears for Fears, has died after falling from a ledge at the Whiteley’s Centre in Baywater. He was reportedly talked down from the same ledge two weeks ago.
Elichaoff, 55, is the ex-husband of fashion guru Trinny Woodall. They have an 11 year-old child.
