Holland Park’s new season witnesses a revival of Mascagni’s Iris, an opera whose heroine dreams she is being encircled naked by an octopus. It’s the pivotal scene; without it, nothing else makes sense.
Iris was brought back to London by OHP in 1977 after a lifetime’s absence; if you missed it then, here’s your second chance.
Full season and casts were announced today:
Investec Opera Holland Park 2016; 7 June – 13 August
Iris by Pietro Mascagni; June 7, 10, 14, 16, 18
La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini June 11, 13, 15, 17, 19 (matinee 2pm), 23, 24 (Young Artists performance), 25.
La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini; Co-production with Danish National Opera. July 14, 16, 20, 22, 27, 30.
Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II; July 19, 21, 23 and 28 and August 3, 5.
The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; August 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13.
Iris
Iris Anne Sophie Duprels; Il Cieco Mikhail Svetlov; Osaka Noah Stewart; Kyoto James Cleverton; Geisha Johane Ansell; Haberdasher Timothy Langston; Rag Merchant Michael Bradley; Conductor Stuart Stratford; Director Olivia Fuchs
La bohème Mimi Anna Patalong; Rodolfo Shaun Dixon; Musetta Elin Pritchard; Schaunard Frederick Long; Colline John Savournin; Benoit John Lofthouse; Alcindoro James Harrison; Parpignol Michael Bradley; Conductor Matthew Waldren; Director Stephen Barlow
La Cenerentola; Angelina Victoria Simmonds; Prince Ramiro Nico Darmanin; Dandini Nicholas Lester; Don Magnifico Jonathan Veira; Alidoro Barnaby Rea; Clorinda Fleur de Bray; Tisbe Heather Lowe; Conductor Dane Lam; Director Oliver Platt.
Die Fledermaus Gabriel von Eisenstein Ben Johnson; Rosalinde Susanna Hurrell; Adele Jennifer France; Alfred Peter Davoren; Dr Blind Robert Burt; Frank John Lofthouse; Prince Orlofsky Samantha Price; Conductor John Rigby; Director Martin Lloyd-Evans
The Queen of Spades Hermann Peter Wedd; Lisa Natalya Romaniw; Countess Rosalind Plowright OBE; Count Tomsky and Zlatogor Richard Burkhard; Prince Yeletsky Grant Doyle; Polina and Milovzor Laura Woods; Masha and Prilepa Daisy Brown Surin and Boy Commander Simon Wilding; Chekalinsky Aled Hall; Narumov Henry Grant Kerswell; Master of Ceremonies Timothy Langston; Governess Laura Zigmantaite; Conductor Peter Robinson; Director Rodula Gaitanou
A Nielsen survey on music spending in China is less than averagely encouraging.
According to the sales-measuring organisation, wealthy people in China spend an average of 914 yuan ($139) on music per year. Poorer Chinese spend 118 yuan ($18).
That’s some way below music industry expectations. Details here.
Tass reports: Moscow State Philharmonia Society on the first day of subscription ticket sales earned 88 million rubles today.
In the foyer of the Tchaikovsky’s Concert Hall for customers were created the most comfortable conditions : chairs, a buffet, duty medical care The cost of subscription for adult varies from 400 to 4000 Rubles (5 – 50$). The cost of children’s subscription is around 600 rubles.
Today Moscow Philharmonia consists of different venues, among them are: Tchaikovsky Concert Hall (pictured), the Philharmonic Chamber Hall, and also Large, Small and Rachmaninov halls of the Conservatory, and the new “Philharmonic-2” Hall, which was opened a year and a half ago in the south-west of Moscow.
The interest in subscriptions this year, probably, was caused primarily by low prices. Compared to previous years, they have not risen. Another caveat is the simultaneous start of sales of almost all two hundred subscriptions. In the past year, they were selling part by part, at intervals of several weeks.
Paul Meecham, the quiet-spoken British president of the Baltimore Symphony is out, after ten years of uphill struggle. Baltimore, as we reported recently, is a city spiralling into decline.
The orchestra has its centenary coming up next year but cannot raise enough cash to put on an extravagant celebration. It may be that Paul is paying the price for matters beyond his control.
He has, however, a jot to go to. It’s the Utah Symphony.
Warmer than Baltimore. Less pressure. We will him well.
Paul said today: ‘If you had asked me a year ago if I would leave Baltimore, I would have said, ‘Are you out of your mind,’ but these Utah people are very, quietly persuasive… It’s an intriguing prospect…
‘I first said, ‘No, thank you,’ but as I started to talk with them more it started to coalesce. The Utah Symphony is an orchestra definitely on the rise. And I am intrigued by the combination of orchestra and opera, an art form I’ve always loved.’
Dafydd Burne-Jones, a staff director at Scottish Opera for 37 years, has died of cancer, the company has announced.
Known to everyone as Robert, he said the highlight of his career was working with Leonard Bernstein on Candide in 1988.
Asked what he loved best about the job, he said: ‘Every day I am surrounded by people who are passionate about what they do and are at the very top of their game. I spend most days listening to beautiful music played and sung by highly talented artists, and seeing that work coming to fruition through the efforts of enormously skilled and enthusiastic craftspeople. No one could fail to be uplifted working among such extraordinary colleagues.’
The death has been reported* of Duncan Robertson, a splendid tenor and pillar of Scottish Opera, who enjoyed a far-flung international career. Duncan was 91. He recorded with Callas, Giulini and other giants of his era.
A sound artist named Brendan Landis, who records as Hey Exit, has created a fascinating piece by combing every known recording of Satie’s Gymnopedie 1. As each plays at the same time, the attention shifts to the variations in tempo and phrasing, and creates a dense sound with rounded edges. Wild stuff!
It must be something in the plum juice that produces, generation after generation, a cluster of distinctive string quartets from the country now constituted as the Czech Republic. There is nothing like a Czech string quartet. It’s a generic school of ensemble playing that aligns all the right accents to a witty, virile expressiveness and an almost effortless panache.
Count the present contenders on the world stage: the Panocha, the Pavel Haas, the Pražák, the Stamic, the Vlach, the Wihan, and the daddy of them all, the Talich. There are presently seven or eight Czech quartets of the highest quality out there. No other nation of ten million can match that.
This is Aleksey Igudesman’s delightful new act with Manaho Shimokawa.
And this is, er, not.
Things you no longer have to do once you’re music director of the New Philharmonic.
Peter Hall, the architect who took over the unfinished building after the resignation of its visionary designer Jorn Utzon, received so much abuse that he retreated into a bottle and died a broken man at 64.
Now, it’s being acknowledged that Hall made the best of a very bad job. If anyone buggered up the opera house, it as the Sydney politicians who could not stop meddling. ‘Why was my father treated so badly?’ his son wants to know.
There’s a new documentary about Hall on the ABC. Unfortunately, you can only watch it in Australia. (UPDATE: Or try this link, which may work in the US and UK).
The music director of the Metropolitan Opera keeps much of his life under wraps, including the fairly open secret that he has been suffering for several years from Parkinson’s Disease. The tremors have been noticeable.
But when Peter Gelb suggested that now was the time to make way for a younger man Levine, 72, took the New York Times to see his doctor in a bid to prove that, with an adjustment of medication, he was still up to the job.
Michael Cooper describes a desperate and peculiar situation in today’s Times:
Mr. Levine said he had feared his Parkinson’s was getting worse. “I was surprised, and I was worried,” he said, noting that for a while he played “telephone tag” with his doctor and was not seen. “I didn’t want to be doing substandard performances and stay working too long, but I felt so good about the way I was able to work — other than this gestural thing.”
Dr. Fahn, who is an expert on Parkinson’s, said in an interview with Mr. Levine present that Mr. Levine had Parkinson’s disease, but that it did not seem to be progressing and that his involuntary movements, or dyskinesia, seemed to result from too high a dose of the medication L-dopa…
