The Financial Times, which is not part of the Panama Papers ring, has published a study of the offshore activities of the cellist Sergei Roldugin, who is linked to funds of $2 billion, possibly connected to his friend, President Putin.
The leaked documents show that Mr Roldugin has access to a complicated financial network run by Bank Rossiya, whose owner Yuri Kovalchuk set up a dacha co-operative outside St Petersburg in the 1990s with Mr Putin and several friends who went on to become billionaires. …
The leaks show that Mr Roldugin also owns shares in car manufacturers Kamaz and Avtovaz. They also reveal that other companies linked to the cellist received millions in payments from Russian oligarchs on extremely favourable terms that recall the donations used to build a $1bn “palace,” allegedly for Mr Putin, on the Black Sea near Sochi.
So that’s how its done.
Read on here.
Dominique Meyer, the director, has been warning for a while that money is tight and he’ll have to cut back.
The new season, announced this morning, has just five new productions:
Ø Gluck Armide (16. October 2016 – Cond.: Marc Minkowski; Dir: Ivan Alexandre; Cast: Gaëlle Arquez, Paolo Rumetz, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Gabriel Bermúdez, Jinxu Xiahou, Olga Bezsmertna, Hila Fahima; Orchestra: Les Musiciens du Louvre);
Ø Verdi Falstaff (4. December 2016 – Cond.: Zubin Mehta; Dir: David McVicar; Cast: Ambrogio Maestri, Ludovic Tézier, Paolo Fanale, Carmen Giannattasio, Hila Fahima, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Lilly Jørstad);
Ø Verdi Il trovatore (5. Februar 2017 – Cond: Marco Armiliato; Dir.: Daniele Abbado; Cast: Ludovic Tézier, Anna Netrebko, Roberto Alagna, Luciana D’Intino);
Ø Wagner Parsifal (30. März 2017 – Cond: Semyon Bychkov; Dir: Alvis Hermanis; Cast: Gerald Finley (pictured), Hans-Peter König, Christopher Ventris, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Nina Stemme);
Ø Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande (18. Juni 2017 – Cond: Alain Altinoglu; Dir: Marco Arturo Marelli; Cast: Franz-Josef Selig, Bernarda Fink, Benjamin Bruns, Simon Keenlyside, Olga Bezsmertna)
In all, the Vienna State Opera present 54 different operas around the year.
Sylvain Cambreling will leave in 2018, together with the Intendant Jossi Wieler.
Sylvain, 67, is reconfiguring his life after the death of his partner, Gerard Mortier.
Asked for future plans, he says: ‘I’d like to live a bit.’
Anna Netrebko will appear for the first time as Bellini’s Norma to open Covent Garden’s 2016-17 season.
The new production, directed by the Catalan theatre group La Fura dels Baus, will feature the Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja making his role debut as Pollione, and the Italian mezzo Sonia Ganassi as Adalgisa.
It has just been announced that Sir Antonio Pappano has renewed his contract until 2020.
That allays fears of instability triggered by the resignation of Royal Opera artistic director Kasper Holten.
There will be seven new productions next season – Norma, Così fan tutte, Shostakovich The Nose, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Thomas Ades’s Exterminating Angel, and Verdi’s Otello.
Pappano, in his 15th season, will conduct three new shows and two revivals. Barry Kosky and Jan Philipp Gloger are the two new directors.
Glogger makes his UK debut with Cosi. Kosky is a long-shot candidate to succeed Holten.
Kasper Holten writes:
Have just had my last season press conference, to announce our 2016/17 season, together with Kevin O’Hare, Tony Pappano and Alex Beard. I am so excited about this season, it feels like all the things we want to do are finally unfolding after years of planning and preparation – Tom Ades’ new opera The Exterminating Angel, Norma with Netrebko, Otello with Kaufmann, Rosenkavalier with Fleming, The Nose directed by Barrie Kosky w Metzmacher conducting, me and Tony doing a new Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, a terrific team for a new Cosi, and so many fabulous singers and conductors in revivals of Written on Skin, Mitridate, Adriana Lecouvreur, Manon Lescaut, Hoffmann, Trovatore, Don Carlo, Turandot, Butterfly, Barbiere, Elisir – and three amazing Violettas in the inevitable Traviatas! It is going to be SO hard to leave this place…
The German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has pulled out of Carnegie Hall’s annual Isaac Stern memorial concert this Saturday because his baby is arriving earlier than expected.
James Ehnes will jump in.
He will play an all-Brahms recital with Leif Ove Andsnes, violist Tabea Zimmerman, and cellist Clemens Hagen.
Katie Wagner has called a security summit with local and national authorities after Uwe Eric Laufenberg, this summer’s Parsifal director, said he was planning an Islamic theme for his production.
Laufenberg denied initial reports that the Flowermaidens would be wearing burkas, only to be stripped naked. He did confirm, however, the connection to Islam – the mere mention of which has sent festival into panic mode.
The notion of an Islamised Parsifal is not, as it happens, daringly original. Nadja Michael (above) wore the burka as Kundry last year at the Colon in Buenos Aires.
The young Finn wonder Klaus Mäkelä – he’s 20 but looks as if he’s yet to matriculate – has been snapped up by the London agency HarrisonParrott, prime purveyors of Finland batons.
press notice:
Berlin, April 5, 2016 Ricordi Berlin is looking for new composers and has therefore launched a composers competition. The program RicordiLab will provide the opportunity for up to five emerging composers to participate in a three-year collaboration with our publishing house. Ricordi Berlin will publish selected works, provide international promotion for successful applicants and will also support the laureates with expertise in the music industry.
The application runs from now until May 31st. The competition is open to all composers born after May 31, 1976. Applicants need to submit 4 compositions: 2 works for small ensemble, 1 work for large ensemble and 1 work for orchestra. For more information please go to the websitewww.ricordi-lab.com
An advisory board of internationally renowned experts consisting of Kristjan Järvi (conductor), Liza Lim (composer), Gillian Moore (Director of Music, Southbank Centre) and Dr. Clemens Trautmann (President, Deutsche Grammophon) will consult the publisher. The competition is supported by VAN, the international online magazine for classical music based in Berlin (www.van-magazin.com).
John Von Rhein writes today in the Chicago Tribune about the Artemis Quartet and its new American violinist, Anthea Kreston, who is rapidly adjusting to life in Berlin and on the road.
He makes some errors – ‘she has performed several months (!) on tour with the Artemis Quartet’ – and overstates the obvious: ‘Kreston’s accession to the ensemble means that the Artemis members now are evenly divided among the sexes.’ He also somehow fails to mention that Anthea chronicles her transition from Oregon to Berlin in compelling detail in a widely-read weekly diary.
For the rest of Von Rhein’s piece, click here.
Message from the cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras:
‘Tonight’s concert (and live broadcast) was just cancelled for security reasons, due to some stones which fell on stage (thank God with no one getting hurt!)’.
The concert was at the Salle Métropole in Lausanne, Switzerland.
It contained what would have been the Swiss premiere of Thomas Larcher’s cello concerto, Ouroboros.
UPDATE: The incident was more serious than described above. It appears that part of the stage ceiling collapsed and the house was immediately evacuated.
Most European opera houses put their artistic directors on fixed-term contracts of three or five years, renewable by mutual agreement.
The Covent Garden advertisement for Kasper Holten’s successor as Director of opera at the ROH stipulates that the job is permanent.
Job security may be good for the nerves, but it means higher severance settlements if things go wrong. All the artists are on fixed-term contracts. There are no other jobs for life.
The advertisement is posted here. You have a month to apply.
No salary stipulated. A headhunter is on the case.
UPDATE: Er, no. Someone filled in the ad incorrectly. See here.
