New Jersey’s outgoing conductor Jacques Lacombe, 52, has been named music director of Bonn Opera. He starts a year from now. The contract is for two years.

jacques lacombe

The maestro has been sharing some thoughts in Salzburg, where he’s conducting a concert performance of Verdi’s Ernani. No director?

From the festival press release:

He likes the idea of a conductor who is not only responsible for the orchestra and the music, but also has a say in the staging. This is especially important to him because so many details are inherent in Verdi’s music, says Riccardo Muti. “Today, the conductor and director are often considered completely different, “ the maestro adds. “However, this used to be different, and the conductor was also responsible for the action on stage – precisely because it cannot be separated.”

He remembers many discussions with directors about the implementation of ideas – for example, in the case of Gluck’sOrfeo ed Euridice, where Gluck wrote a cheerful overture, despite the tragic tale of the opera. “He did it in order to give the audience time to find its seats and finish its small talk,” says Maestro Muti. At the time, such was the custom. Then, however, in a stroke of genius, Gluck modulates abruptly from C Major to C Minor. “Suddenly you’re at a funeral,” the conductor says. At the time, a director wanted him to wait at that very moment until the chorus was on stage. “That, however, would weaken the genius of this musical turning point,” says Riccardo Muti, adding that he hates conservative stagings – and is open to new productions, as long as they are well-made and function in harmony with the music.

He fondly recalls a rehearsal period with Domingo, who had sung the role of Otello more than 300 times at that point. “And yet he took a month to rehearse with us,” says the maestro. “It is a question of respect. Domingo was completely on board with the fact that it was to be a new interpretation.” And developing such an interpretation simply takes time. Riccardo Muti has been studying Ernani already since 1982 – the year he conducted it for the first time at La Scala in Milan.

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Photo: Salzburg Festival / Anne Zeuner

Sydney Opera House has cut its energy use by 10 per cent over five years by fitting new lights and using sea water from the harbour to cool its air. The house has won a government award for green conduct.

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The late quartets of Ludwig Van Beethoven are said to have received their London premieres at the home of a print manager of the Times newspaper.

Now we read that the Financial Times has secretly harboured a string quartet below decks.

Its existence is revealed in the new issue of Gramophone magazine by former journalist and Labour would-be Chancellor, Ed Balls, who used to play violin in the group. Two other members were Gillian Tett, now the FT’s US managing editor, and John Happer, associate editor. The fourth player is unnamed.

Come on out, we know you’re there….

And don’t expect the FT’s new Japanese owners to give you time to practise.

 

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Seldom seen outside New York these days due to uncertain health, James Levine has been announced as conductor of Mahler’s second symphony next year at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, of which he was once music director.

The festival has suspended that title with James Conlon’s departure ths summer.

All conductors next year will be guests – six of them first-timers:  Cristian Macelaru, Vasily Petrenko, Ben Gernon, Gustavo Gimeno, Kirill Karabits and George Hanson.

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The House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee intends to call in Alan Yentob to examine his role in the collapse of the charity Kids Company, of which he was chairman.

Yentob, 68, was previously chair of the arts charity ICA, which ran close to insolvency in 2010. He was also a member of the governing body of the perpetually wobbly South Bank Board.

His external involvements have not been challenged before within the BBC but some believe this latest embarrassment has set the clock ticking on a long career.

alan yentob

UPDATE: Newsnight has come up with a Yentob letter, warning the Cabinet Office of violence in the streets and ‘descent into savagery’ if Kids Company was not bailed out. Loss of plot.

In an amazingly swift clean-up and turnaround, the Arnold Schoenberg Centre in Vienna will reopen on Thursday, two weeks after a fire that forced the all-night evacuation of its major artefacts. The library, however, remains closed for the time being.

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schoenberg centre opens

 

Slipped Disc was invited to observe Ukraine’s 24th independence anniversary concert last night in Kiev but was unable to attend.

Amid much verbosity and political bombast, music duties were conducted by Kirill Karabits with the Warsaw-based I, Culture orchestra, cilmaxing in the finale of Beethoven’s ninth symphony.

You can watch the full concert here. Beethoven starts at 55 minutes.

kiev concert

Raymond Yiu’s symphony, premiered tonight at the BBC Proms, is founded on personal memories of the 1980s Aids crisis and wound around Thom Gunn’s poem, In the Time of Plague.

Raymond tells his local newspaper: ‘When I first came to London (from Hong Kong) AIDS seemed to encircle my life. People just vanished, everyone was afraid. And it’s something that stays with me in my mind. You don’t forget something like that.’

It’s tonight, 7.30, here. Not to be missed.

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Former Seattle Opera chief Speight Jenkins has written a thoughtful blogpost on what’s wrong with singers today and why audiences don’t get excited as they used to.

Speight blames musico-political correctness:

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The most successful singers of the past who filled opera houses involved their audiences emotionally in the way they sang. If a soprano can handle all the runs in Lucia’s Mad Scene brilliantly, if a tenor has the right legato for “Una furtiva lagrima” or a baritone the vocal power and accuracy for “Cortigiani”, they are deemed ready for the roles of Lucia, Nemorino, and Rigoletto. Did an audience censor Maria Callas for leaving out the first high E-flat in the Mad Scene? Or Franco Corelli’s throwing in high notes because he could sing them? Or Leonard Warren’s varying the tempi and holding high notes longer than the score indicated?

Another problem with correctness is who it excludes. My firm belief is that two of the greatest artists of the past century, Maria Callas and Leonie Rysanek, would find it hard today to find a job. Why? Both of them, because they were so emotionally involved in what they were singing and acting, were extraordinarily variable. Both could on some nights hit every note, and on others give downright painful performances.

But people queued all night to hear them… Of whom can that be said today?

Read Speight’s full post here.