The Latvian mezzo, returning after a break of several months caring for and mourning her late mother, suggests that her voice is changing.
‘I think my time with Mozart is over,’ she tells Kurier. ‘Also Octavian in Rosenkavalier, after a farewell Met performance in a couple of eyars.’
Elina, still only 39, sings Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther at the Vienna State Opera tonight.
At Zadar in Croatia, architect Nikola Bašić has consttructed an organ that is played by the sea.
Just listen here.
It’s an unearthly beauty.
This is the hat that Helmut wore when the Luftwaffe flew him in to record Mozart at Abbey Road.
But here’s where it ended up.
In the Abbey Road control room, on the head of co-producer John Willan.
John tells Slipped Disc:
The picture is in Abbey Road Studio One control room and that’s his hat! Justus (Frantz) didn’t tell him until the day before the session that the recording was in London – hence the Luftwaffe… And (producer) John Fraser, sitting next to him had, occasionally, to let his hand slip onto the keyboard when the Chancellor missed it.
More about the session here.
The excellent Andrey Boreyko has extend his contract as Music Director of Artis—Naples through to 2021, having been there since 2013.
And Sharon and Timothy Ubben will endow the Music Director position with a $10 million gift.
Sounds good.
Also just in: Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) announces the extension of Rossen Milanov as Music Director for a further five years, to 2022.
The University of California, Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Audio Archive has put up a new website with over 10,000 cylinders to download or stream for free.
Today’s cylinder of the day is Billy Murray, ‘He’d have to get under’. Lovely.
There’s also an archive of opera cylinders, formerly belonging to Gordon Getty. Here.
This just in from St Louis Symphony, America’s second oldest orchestra (est.1880):
The FY15 numbers reflected continued progress, showing the most promising financial results in at least 15 years.
• The operating deficit was $1.6m, an improvement of $583k compared to the FY14 operating deficit of $2.2m. It’s the smallest deficit in at least 15 years for the St. Louis Symphony. The planned deficit is being funded by special donor contributions and the Symphony carries no accumulated deficits from prior years.
• Regular operating revenues totaled $26.6m, up from $26.1m in FY14 by 2.2%.
• Total expenses were flat with FY14 at $28.3m.
There’s still an operating deficit…
From an Opera News interview with Matthew Shilvock:
My first opera was at age thirteen, I think. It was one of Graham Vick’s Birmingham Opera productions, which was a contemporary Beauty and the Beast opera, but it was done in a very immersive way, as Graham does so well.
I grew up with Welsh National Opera, which they would tour to Birmingham, in that wonderful system that England has. By the time I got to Oxford, I had developed a real passion for opera. And while I was at Oxford, I developed a passion for arts administration—I felt that was a very noble pursuit to be going into, and one that energized me. It was an almost masochistic desire to solve the most complicated jigsaw puzzle possible—all of these pieces that have to come together perfectly for the curtain to go up and the show to go on.
More here.
Watch.
Hope he got paid.
h/t: Ariane
Press release from the 2016 Menuhin competition:
The first MENUHIN COMPETITION SURVEY reveals that 82% of the entrants’ parents do not play the violin, with over 45% of the parents never having played any musical instrument. 66% of all the applicants are female and 28% of those who applied do not own their own violin. Another interesting result was that over 50% of the Juniors (under 16s) began to learn the violin under the age of 5.
Full survey here.
Revealing, or just depressing?
Last week, the Swedish clarinet star Martin Fröst cancelled his debut as artistic partner with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota, due to an attack of Meniere’s Disease.
Today, another artistic partner cancelled. Patricia Kopatchinskaja is out of Saturday’s concert with an arm injury. She had given three performance of Michael Hersch’s violin concerto and something went.
This multi-partnership idea is not starting well.
These were the scenes in Seoul as DG issued its debut release of Chopin winner Seong-Jin Cho.
Allen Toussaint, who suffered a heart attack and died in the ambulance that took him to hospital, was an allround livewire who wrote hundreds of hit songs and performed them himself.
Allen was 77, the soul of New Orleans.
His sexiest hit: Voulay-vew couchez avec mwah, se swah?
