La Sonnambula opens on November 30.
Tina Lanik’s second child was not due until December.
But new babies wait for no-one.
Happily, when Tina went into labour her husband was on hand. He is the stage and costume designer for Sonnambula, Stefan Hagenier.
Bellini’s all round. We hear the new baby’s middle name is Amina, after the opera’s heroine.
Peter Gelb has owned up to another bad year – a $22 million loss, the worst in history.
The deficit is 7% of total budget. Once before, in 1984, it was 10%. But in cash terms this year’s results are awful beyond precedent.
Ticket sales are down, donations are weak.
Gelb has not published the financial statement. He has leaked it to the New York Times.
Two questions need to be asked: has Gelb failed? Does he have what it takes to turn the Met around?
Meantime, Gelb is looking for someone to blame. He can’t blame the musicians or stage unions, since he agrred to their deal.
He could blame the public for not coming and the donors for not giving.
Who’s left to blame?
(Hint: President Obama).
The recent existential dispute with Peter Gelb and his board has liberated many musicians in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra to speak freely about their lives, inside and outside the Met. Kari Jane Docter, a cellist, is married to Bruno Eicher, an assistant concertmaster.
She loves her job. Read how much here.
photo: Pedro Diaz
Sotheby’s ‘unseen’ Mozart (first seen on Slipped Disc) sold today at the low end of the auction house’s estimate, making £218,000.
Toshiyuki Kamioka, 54, has made his career in Germany.
He was Generalmusidirektor in Wiesbaden from 1996 to 2004, and in Herford from 1998.
Since 2004 he has been Generalmusikdirektor in Wuppertal.
Today he announced he’s giving up and going home to Japan.
Joshua Weilerstein has been named artistic director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne from next summer on a four year deal. Recently, he came second in a baton shoot-out for the Luxembourg Philharmonic.
Lausanne has nicer views.
Andrew Patner tells us that the film director Mike Nichols, who died today, was the first announcer at WFMT Chicago and creator of its 61 year running Saturday night folk music and comedy program “The Midnight Special.”
He also wrote the station’s audition test for prospective announcers. The test is still used today. Try it, when no-one’s at home. Starting now:
The WFMT announcer’s lot is not a happy one. In addition to uttering the sibilant, mellifluous cadences of such cacophonous sounds as Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Carl Schuricht, Nicanor Zabaleta, Hans Knappertsbusch and the Hammerklavier Sonata, he must thread his vocal way through the complications of L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and other complicated nomenclature.
However, it must by no means be assumed that the ability to pronounce L’Orchestre de la Societé des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris with fluidity and verve outweighs an ease, naturalness and friendliness of delivery when at the omnipresent microphone. For example, when delivering a diatribe concerning Claudia Muzio, Beniamino Gigli, Hetty Plumacher, Giacinto Prandelli, Hilde Rössel-Majdan and Lina Pagliughi, five out of six is good enough if the sixth one is mispronounced plausibly. Jessica Dragonette and Margaret Truman are taken for granted.
Poets, although not such a constant annoyance as polysyllabically named singers, creep in now and then. Of course Dylan Thomas and W.B. Yeats are no great worry. Composers occur almost incessantly, and they range all the way from Albeniz, Alfven and Auric through Wolf-Ferrari and Zeisl.
Let us reiterate that a warm, simple tone of voice is desirable, even when introducing the Bach Cantata “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis,” or Monteverdi’s opera “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.”
Such then, is the warp and woof of an announcer’s existence “in diesen heil’gen Hallen.”
Classic FM, Radio 3, anyone?
We are sad to report the death in Bristol, after a long illness, of Robin Miller, a prince among British oboists. He was 72.
Robin was picked by Pierre Boulez as principal oboe in the BBC Symphony Orchestra and went on to play for 13 years in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
He was a founder member of the Nash Ensemble and was chosen by Peter Maxwell Davies to perform Strathclyde Concerto #1.
Our condolences to his wife Mary, family and friends.
photo: SCO
image courtesy Edition Records
He was paper-thin and confined to a wheelchair when I saw him at the Warsaw Chopin festival in August last year, but Frans Brüggen was happy to cooperate with a film team, scorning his frailty, oblivious to image. He died a year later.
The documentary about Frans Brüggen and his Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century by Katarzyna Kasica and Stanislaw Leszczyński during the Chopin Festival 2013 has been selected by the prestigious Amsterdam documentary festival IDFA.You can watch a clip here.
The Mexican conductor Luis Fernando Luna Guarneros, missing since Sunday, has been found murdered.
The death is being treated as a crime of passion, although there are other lines of inquiry. Strange messages were sent from his cellphone for two days after his disappearance.
Luis was associate director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Yucatán, in a land of great lawlessness.
Ivey Dickson ran the National Youth Orchestra from 1966 to 1984, shifting the repertoire from English-traditional to Stravinsky, Bartok and Boulez. Simon Rattle, a percussion player, was decisively influenced. Ivey has died, aged 95. Obituary here.
photo (c) Graham Salter/Lebrecht Music&Arts, c.1980
