Today’s extraordinary, unanimous declaration of support for English National Opera’s embattled chief was not just a matter of collegial solidarity and personal friendship. For weeks, frowns have been forming on the brows of opera planners the world over as to what would happen if Berry was sacked.
Put simply, John Berry has made ENO indispensanble to world opera by acting as a staging post and clearing house for new productions. The Metropolitan Opera trials new shows at the Coliseum before they go to New York. So does Bavarian State Opera, Madrid and many more. London, through Berry, has become an opera hub as never before.
The only people who failed to notice ENO’s significant role were certain members of Arts Council England and several on Berry’s own board, some of whom had personal axes to grind. ACE slashed his funding; the board tried to fire him.
That’s when the alrm bells started ringing around the opera world. We understand that the twin leaders of the Berry fightback were Peter Gelb at the Met and Alexander Neef at Canadian Opera Company.
One European chief they contacted wrote back: ‘No need to show me the statement. If it supports John, sign it in my name.’
This has been a wakeup day for opera managers and funders. Let’s hope ENO’s new acting CEO can put the house in order.
Steve Zegree, Professor of Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 2012 has died. He led the world-famous vocal jazz group, Gold Company.
The new acting CEO is a management consultant.
press release:
English National Opera (ENO) today, Monday 9 March 2015, announced that Cressida Pollock has been appointed as its interim CEO. Cressida will start in the role on 24 March 2015.
Cressida Pollock joins the executive team of ENO from global management consultancy McKinsey& Company. From her time at McKinsey she brings great experience in advising and helping businesses and other organisations to tackle their biggest challenges and raise their levels of performance. Ms Pollock will report directly to the ENO board of trustees and will be responsible for the day to day leadership of the ENO senior management team and all of the Company’s operations.
The appointment was made by a panel of ENO board members, led by Acting Chairman Harry Brünjes, alongside Joyce Wilson from Arts Council England (ACE).
In an extraordinary show of unanimity, the leaders of all the world’s major opera houses have signed a declaration of support for the embattled director of English National Opera. From Peter Gelb at the Met to Vladimir Urin at the Bolshoi, the opera community denounces recent attempts (by the Arts Council and his own board) to unseat Berry, pointing out that the financial diffficulties he faces are shared around the world>
The signatories are individuals of high ego worth. They could not normally becounted on to agree if the sun was shining. Their declaration is a mark both of Berry’s personal popularity and of his importance across the operatic spectrum.
Read it below. UPDATE: And here’s why they did it.
As the leaders of opera companies and festivals around the world, we are alarmed by the
recent questions that have arisen regarding English National Opera and its talented Artistic
Director, John Berry, since they are certainly not deserved. Under Berry’s strong ten-year
leadership, the ENO is today regarded as one of the most creative forces in opera,
consistently producing important new work. The ENO is a showcase for local talent and
theatrical innovation, with the current hit run of Richard Jones’s production of Wagner’s Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg just the latest example in a long string of artistic successes for
Berry and his company.
The ENO’s co-productions with other international companies have wisely saved it millions
of pounds in shared production expenses in recent years, while at the same time making it
one of the U.K.’s greatest cultural ambassadors. In fact, this season alone, 18 ENO co-
productions will have been seen in 17 different opera houses in 8 countries, with tens of
thousands of international opera lovers in attendance from New York to Perth.
At a time when it has helped to further embellish London’s reputation as a leading center of
cultural creativity, it doesn’t seem fair for the ENO to now be under fire.
It is not the fault of the ENO that it is suffering from the same financial woes that many
international opera companies are facing these days. Rather than being criticized, Berry and
his company should be applauded for their indefatigable efforts to keep our art form fresh.
We stand together in support of him and his notable achievements.
Cahn
Yours sincerely,
Pierre Audi
Director
Dutch National Opera
Nikolaus Bachler
Director
Bavarian State Opera
Aviel
Artistic Director
Opera Vlaanderen
Jean-Luc Choplin
Director General
Theatre du Chatelet
David Devan
General Director
Opera Philadelphia
Marc de Mauny
General Manager
Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre
Serge Dorny
Director
Opéra de Lyon
Bernard Foccroulle
Director
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Peter Gelb
General Manager
The Metropolitan Opera
Valery Gergiev
Artistic and General Director
Mariinsky Theatre
Roland Geyer
Director
Theatre an der Wien
David Gockley
General Director
San Francisco Opera
Christopher Hahn
General Director
Pittsburgh Opera
Per Boye Hansen
Opera Director
Den Norske Opera og Ballett, Oslo
Dr. Bernhard Helmich
Generalintendant
Theater Bonn
Andreas Homoki
Director
Opera Zurich
Christopher Koelsch
President and CEO
LA Opera
Barrie Kosky
Director
Komische Oper Berlin
Aidan Lang
General Director
Seattle Opera
Bernd Loebe
Director and Chief Executive
Oper Frankfurt
Stéphane Lissner
Director
Paris National Opera
Charles MacKay
General Director
The Santa Fe Opera
Joan Matabosch
Artistic Director
Teatro Real, Madrid
Joseph V. Melillo
Executive Producer
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Dominique Meyer
Director
Vienna State Opera
Alexander Neef
General Director
Canadian Opera Company
Timothy O’Leary
General Director
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
Alexander Pereira
General Manager and Artistic Director
Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Tobias Richter
General Manager
Grand Théâtre de Genève
Christina Scheppelmann
Artistic Director
Gran Teatre del Liceu
Dietmar Schwarz
Director
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Vladimir Urin
General Director
Bolshoi
Jossi Wieler
Director
Stuttgart State Opera
When Jinty McTavish went to Northwestern University at the start of the current academic year, it was to study viola with Roland Vamos. Barely had she settled in than Professor Vamos, an internationally renowned teacher, was sacked. NWU offered no explanation. What would you expect Jinty to do? Here’s her account of events.
When I came to Northwestern University, I had every intention of getting my master’s degree. I was so incredibly excited to begin my studies at such a beautiful school that was located so close to downtown Chicago and offered so many inspiring things. However, as I began my studies, I began to realize that this place wasn’t all that I had expected it to be. While there were several things from the beginning of my studies here that I didn’t like, there was one main event that made me to decide to leave the school. When I came back from Christmas break this year, the Bienen school of music had unfortunately decided that they didn’t want to have the highly esteemed and amazing pedagogue, Roland Vamos, at their institution as a professor anymore. They had also decided that this would happen without first discussing it with all of Mr. Vamos’ students, many of whom had come to the school without much scholarship to specifically study with him. I was so incredibly shocked. How could such a wise and sweet man who had so much to offer be pushed out? And how could the school have neglected to have even let his students know that they were doing so? Students who wanted to study with him?
The entire month of January was spent banding together with students to organize a meeting with either the dean of Bienen or someone higher up to start an open conversation about what we had been hearing. When our first email was met with a snarky response, which told us that we shouldn’t be worrying because our teachers would be with us for this year (saying nothing about following years and nothing about organizing a meeting to make us as students feel better) I got angry and frustrated. What is the purpose of an administration other than to the students and their teachers? Aren’t we the ones paying their salary? What is a music school without those teachers? Especially teachers as highly regarded as the Vamos’?
Many of you might ask, “how did this situation affect you, since you weren’t a viola student?” Since the Vamos’ are married and teach together famously as a team, this affected both of them equally. How could Mrs. Vamos continue teaching at an institution that so highly disrespected her other half? Even if Mr. Vamos had been the only one to stop teaching, it would have affected me the same. It would have kept me from studying under the wonderful Vamos team!
After fighting with the students via letters to try to contact the President and Provost since we hadn’t received any indication that the dean wanted to organize a meeting with us, we finally received another letter from the dean of Bienen. This letter was only written to let us know that the Vamos’ had resigned from NU. The letter assured all of us that steps would be taken to secure a new teacher. No mention was made of taking the ballots from the students on this matter.
My decision was made final. I will be leaving NU after this quarter. I will be continuing my studies with the Vamos’ privately. This has been a very difficult quarter for me, but I am happy and I am doing well! I get to study with the teacher I came to study with. I also get more practice time and more opportunities to travel and hopefully begin participating in violin competitions.
If you’ve made it this far into my post. Thank you. I think this story needs to be shared so that people are able to see what really happened. I was one of the lucky people who wasn’t severely impacted by the administration’s poor handling of the situation. I have a plan. There are students in my studio who are under intense stress right now trying to scramble auditions together or figure out some way to finish their degree with the teachers they had wanted to study with. I am so thankful for the colleagues and new friends I have met during my time at Bienen, and I am excited to move forward on this new path.
If you want to share my story, that would be extremely welcome. Northwestern has neglected to tell auditioning students at this point that both Vamos’ will not be teaching next year. I think it only fair that everyone hears this story and gets a heads up on what has happened.
Slipped Disc would welcome a response from NWU and the Bienen school of music. If you have been subjected to a similar experience in ollege, please share it in Comments.
In a forthright interview with Deutsche Welle, the incoming conductor of the Munich Philharmonic calls Vladimir Putin ‘unique’ and ‘smarter than most others’.
He also maintains he can work quite well in the much-derided Gasteig hall. Read here.
The Manchurian Candidate has been around for half a century as a novel and two feature movies. This weekend it opened in Minnesota as an opera by Kevin Puts. Kate Leibfried never seen an opera, but she had heard of the title. She went along. Here’s what she saw, and felt, and took home. Read on…
CBS have aired the last program made by the veteran international correspondent, an affectionate 60 Minutes profile of the music director of the Metropolitan Opera. When Simon was killed last month in a road accident, his memorial service was held at the Met. He finished making the program a week before his death. Watch program here.
