Dominique Meyer has announced an opera on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by Olga Neuwirth, due in December 2019.

The composer says: ‘Ever since I was a child I have always been interested in everything, from arts to politics, sciences to human psychology. Passionate towards everything. I let myself be inspired in the same way by the small and big things that the world has to offer, by the wonderful diversity of life, and that is something that I see reflected. The essence of this fictional biography is the love for oddities, the supernatural, deceit, virtuosity, exaltation andexaggeration. It’s also about remembrance, about a sophisticated form of sexual allure and against the restraint toward a single gender. Another important topic is also the refusal to be patronised and to be treated in a condescending way, which is something that happens over and over again to women and will keep on happening. Virginia Woolf questioned the roles of man and woman, the status of women in society and their approach to literature. My musical theatre won’t be about a theoretical proof, but about different possibilities that unfold – also musically – scene by scene. For me Orlando and music are very similar: through the centuries the story of Orlando conveys, in the same way as (classical) music, on the one side the bittersweet pain that goes beyond words, and on the other hand the precise structures, proportions, abstraction and mathematical-scientific thinking and solace. Each life arises from a process of self-creation. As we live, we create our own world. In the same way as we do with music, or with and through Orlando’.

John Oliver, founder of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in 1970 and its leader ever since, will steo down after this summer. Press release follows.

John Oliver, the Founder and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, will step down from his leadership position with the ensemble as of the end of the 2015 Tanglewood season.  Mr. Oliver’s final concert as Conductor of the chorus will take place on Sunday, August 16, in connection with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and soloists, under the direction of Asher Fisch (further details available at www.tanglewood.org).

Mr. Oliver, who has consistently garnered high praise from critics and audiences alike for his work with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, founded the ensemble as the official chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1970.  He has prepared the TFC in more than 200 works for well over 1000 performances, including appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall, and on tour in Europe and the Far East, as well as with visiting orchestras and as a solo ensemble.  The TFC, under the direction of Mr. Oliver, has been featured with the BSO in more than forty commercial releases, as well as on the BSO Classics label, with James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Keith Lockhart, and John Williams.  Click here to view John Oliver’s bio and photos.

In honor of his 45 years of service to the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the BSO will give Mr. Oliver the Tanglewood Medal at a ceremony to take place during the 2015 Tanglewood season.  Mr. Oliver is only the second recipient of the Tanglewood Medal; Seiji Ozawa was the first recipient of the awardin 2012, when the medal was created as a new tradition in honor of the festival’s 75th anniversary that summer. In addition to taking on the newly created lifetime title of Founder and Conductor Laureate of the TFC, John Oliver will also assume the title of Master Teacher Chair at the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO’s preeminent summer music academy, beginning in summer of 2016.  In this new role, Mr. Oliver will work with TMC Fellows in a variety of capacities, the details of which will be announced at a later date.

Someone speculated the other day that David Whelton, nearing 30 years as chief exec of the Philharmonia Orchestra, must be the greatest current survivor in orchestral administration, with the exception of Avi Shoshani at the Israel Phil.

And maybe not just current.

Arthur Judson sets the benchmark. He managed the Philadelphia Orchestra 1915-35 and the New York Philharmonic from 1922 to 1956 while also running America’s biggest artists agency on the side).

Has anyone managed longer?

Let start a list.

Ten years ago, classical labels were squandering their budgets on anything-but-classical, meandering into a dead-end alley where they made neither money nor friends.

That trend came to an eventual end.

I’m wondering whether we’re seeing a revival of sorts in the quirky sort of thing I’ve chosen as my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com. See what you think. Click here.

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.