The great man is asked about his most embarrassing moments… a video that popped up in our feed.

pavarotti

From Alexander Gilman, artistic director of LGT Young Soloists:

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I am flying with my youth ensemble LGT Young Soloists to Dubai next April. The concert organizer has booked the flights with Emirates. During the booking process, Emirates has asked the concert organizer for the exact measurements of the instruments. After receiving the measurements for the violas, they forced the organizer to book a separate seat for the instruments…

We are not talking about low cost airlines such Ryanair, Airberlin or Easyjet. This is Emirates – one of the leading airlines in the world which is now asking for a seat for the violas…

The manufactured controversy over the Met’s late adoption of an established opera by Kaija Saariaho has bred a spate of thoughts about the state of prejudice against women opera composers.

Our pal Shawn E. Milnes reflects on the sorry history here, but he finds a rising tide of equality in smaller companies. By way of contradiction, the composer Missy Mazzoli offers disquieting evidence of a double standard:

missy mazzoli

I have a friend, a composer, who told me, ‘When a man writes something lyrical it’s seen as brave and courageous, but when a woman does it it’s seen as sentimental and indulgent.’ This was in the late ’90s and she was commenting on how sexist the new music community was. I’d like to say that times have changed, but I think this is still totally true.

More here.

In the Guardian, Charlotte Higgins argues that opera is both unfair and sadistic towards women.

You might expect that, in the modern era, women’s roles would have changed, but opera is a big and expensive artform whose repertoire is not easily refreshed. Women composers of opera on the grand scale are few and far between….Their librettists have sometimes been women.

Discuss.

Lulu Cigar1 met

The most daring analysis comes from the critic and publisher Martin Anderson, who bravely associates composing with a form of autism.

It strikes me that what gives a composer the tenacity to sit at a desk endlessly turning patterns over in his (or her!) mind is likely to be some form of autism – which is a spectral condition, so that you have it to varying degrees of intensity. Some composers would seem to have been full-blown Asperger sufferers and so to have had the social dysfunctionality that goes with it – think of Alkan, Beethoven, Brahms, Janáček, Langgaard, Martinů, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Weinberg and many others. My suspicion, indeed, is that the capacity to take infinite pains over something that’s often minutious means that music, mathematics and other such ‘mental’ disciplines are going to attract and reward minds that are autistic to some degree and find satisfaction in such activity.

Now, autism affects males much more than females, to an extent current estimates of which vary, but the ranges are between twice and sixteen times as much. Since the historical preponderance of male over female composers seems to have survived into our more liberal times, could it be that there are fewer composing women simply because women as a rule are more ‘normal’ than men, that fewer of them are obsessive to the degree required to be a Janáček or a Shostakovich?

Phew! Read on here.

Talk among yourselves.

The London Symphony Orchestra have elected a new chairman, succeeding Lennox Mackenzie, who is stepping down after 16 years.

The new chief is Gareth Davies, 44, principal flute since 2000. Gareth will have a tough learning curve with Simon Rattle coming in as music director, equipped for the first time in LSO history with what is widely believed to be the right to hire and fire musicians and staff*. We wish Gareth well.

gareth davies

*UPDATE: An LSO source who has seen the contract has clarified that the right to hire and fire is not included. Rattle’s title and authority, however, are more powerful than any of his predecessors.

Meanwhile, at the London Mozart Players, Nicolas Soames has departed as interim manager. Julia Desbruslais, co-principal cello for the past 25 years, has stepped up as executive director.

And at the Philharmonia white smoke is awaited on a successor to chief exec David Whelton, who retires in April.

Now the orchestra has finally broken the double-digit barrier – 10 women out of 121 members – its chairman, Andreas Großbauer, is speculating that the gender balance will be overturned in the course of the next generation.

ORF report here.

Andreas Großbauer

We hear that Boris Allakhverdyan, principal clarinet at the Metropolitan Opera since 2013, won the audition for the same seat at the LA Philharmonic on Friday.

He is the fourth woodwind principal out of eight to flee the Met in the past two years – both principal flutes quit on the same day last summer, one to Chicago, the other to LA.

We hear also that a fifth Met woodwind principal is in talks with Chicago and a sixth is preparing to retire. There is growing unease in the Met orchestra over the company’s general drift and the on-off music director position.

 

boris allakhverdyan