Yesterday’s performance of Luigi Rossi’s Orpheus at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse was cancelled at a few hours notice yesterday by the Royal Opera House ‘due to several singers being ill’.

This seems to have been the final scheduled performance of a rediscovered baroque work.

 

orpheus royal opera

Struggling English National Opera, on probation to improve its financial position, has been granted a qualified extra year of state funding. The measure, as so often with ACE, is neither here nor there. It is buried with news of a gallery in Colchester doing rather well.

From the ACE statement:

The Arts Council believes that the ENO is fully committed to achieving positive and sustainable changes to its operating model. A CEO has been appointed until 2018 to lead the company through substantial operational changes and the organisation has made good progress in restructuring the financial and operational management of the company. Progress has also been made in strengthening the organisation’s governance and leadership structure – a permanent Chair has now been recruited and Board membership is being refreshed.

Given the progress made so far, the Arts Council has confirmed an additional year (2017-18) of funding for ENO of £12.38m. The funding will provide the organisation further time to implement the necessary changes to ensure that it has a sustainable and resilient business model capable over the long term of producing and presenting excellent opera to large audiences.

From ENO’s response:

We are very happy that Arts Council England have confirmed our third year of funding. We continue to work closely together to ensure the continued financial stability of ENO. Our recent appointments to the Board and Executive Management Team demonstrate the steps the Company is taking to strengthen governance and significant work has taken place over the past year to ensure the continued financial stability of ENO.

coliseum eno

Previously, ACE had limited ENO to £30.5m over two years of ‘special funding’ before an unspecified threat of withdrawal. ACE seems more concerned with saving face than saving art.

 

Saturday night at a concert in Stockholm Madonna sang a tribute to the Paris victims. With only a guitar for company she performed La Vie en Rose, signature song of Edith Piaf and a cherished epoch.

One may quibble with the interpretation but the sentiment cannot be faulted.

edith piaf

From Ingrid Adamiker:

Hier soir [Sunday]… Wiener Staatsoper … the lights went off and Marco Armiliato reached the pit. Marco kept his hands down. A singer, dressed as Parisian market woman, stepped out of the burgundy-red drapes: Renate Gutsch, since 1988 a chorus soprano at the Vienna State Opera, rose to speak with trembling voice. She pointed out that La Bohème takes place in Paris.

So, artists and co-workers of the Opera wanted to take this coincidence to give a face to their abhorrence of terror and violence. In memory of the victims of the Paris’ attacks, everyone should stand up in silence.

Some 2,100 members of the public, staff, artists behind stage… remained in such a silence you could hear a pin drop…

This was a kind of a moment, I will never, never ever, forget in my life.

Gutsch thanked the audience for its sympathy and wished us all nevertheless, or better, exactly because of that, a great evening at the Wiener Staatsoper.

We will do the same again today.
Monday 16 November @ 12:00 High Noon Paris’ time.

paris moment at vienna opera

UPDATE: We’ve been advised that Renate Gutsch is Austrian. She was dressed as a French marketwoman for the second act. We stand corrected.

Twenty-three musicians from 19 nations are arriving in Paris this morning to play a concert in memory of victims of Friday’s massacre. They include eight concertmasters from 17 leading orchestras.

The perfromance, tonight at 7pm, will consist of works by Barber and Tschaikovsky. It will be directed by concertmasters of  the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France and the Paris Opéra orchestra.

The event, planned originally by Valery Gergiev’s World Orchestra for Peace, to mark the 70th anniversary of UNESCO, will be webcast here.

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