Stephen Lord, the veteran music director of the Opera Theatre of St Louis, has been talking candidly to Kristina Driskill about the singers he looks for when casting an opera and how they should present themselves for audition (no piercings, please).
His reply to the headline question veers towards favouring young singers of apparent versatility rather than, necessarily, the best one for the role at hand. Here’s the reply:
While we don’t discriminate on age, race, size, etc., when all things are equal, and since we tend to promote people from within so often, I try to look toward the potential for future casting. In addition, after the covers have been assigned, we have a huge concert with the St. Louis Symphony where the singers are all featured on stage with the orchestra. I like to be sure the singers will make a good showing. We also try very hard to have a ‘wild card’ singer or two. These are people who are not quite ready but display something different and worth watching. In the end, truth to tell, it is all a shot in the dark but based on experience. Mistakes get made, but mostly things are on the positive side.
The interview as a whole is a must-read for singers. Click here.
Few signs of enthusiasm or confidence have greeted Friday’s appointment of Daniel Kramer, 39, as ENO’s next artistic director.
Kramer, 39, arrived at ENO nine years ago as a protege of the opera-loving actor Simon Callow. He was tasked with directing Harrison Birtwistle’s graphic Punch and Judy and made a decent, if unmemorable, job of it.
What sticks more vividly in mind is his 2009 production of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the Coliseum, which was a total car-crash. Kramer set Bartok’s opera in the concrete basements of modern abductors and mass killers. As I described it at the time:
Daniel Kramer, the young American director who added ten degrees of chill to Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy at the Young Vic, places Bluebeard in a world of sexual abduction and child abuse – the world of Fred and Rose West who buried victims in the foundations of their Gloucester home, of the Belgian paedophile rings and, most explicitly, in the warped world of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian building materials salesman who raped his daughter and kept her family imprisoned in the basement of his Amstetten home.
More than merely unpleasant and exploitative, the production was incoherent, ugly and irretrievably naive. Careers have been ended by less awful shows.
Kramer’s new employers maintain he has matured. The board chose him from a limited field of candidates willing to risk their careers on a failing company, a field reduced still further by the subjugation of the artistic director to a cost-cutting chief exec and a deeply uninspiring board.
No hats are being thrown in the air. This is a very low-key event. Kramer is the board’s last dice left to throw. If he fails, ENO goes.
As we reported last July, the Mellon Foundation has given $900,000 to the Cincinnati Symphony and the local Conservatory to train up minority musicians to take the lead in professional symphony orchestras.
The first five candidates have been chosen – all string players, are area where minorities are most under-represented. The five are:
l-r: CSO concertmaster Timothy Lees, cellist Diana Flores, violist Emilio Carlo, violinist Vijeta Sathyaraj, cellist Blake-Anthony Johnson , double bassist Maurice Todd, CCM dean Peter Landgren
In another blow to the former Toronto Symphony CEO, the Banff Centre – his previous post – has slashed eight percent of the workforce and demolished Jeff Melanson’s much-vaunted restructuring.
His successor says: ‘It was wonderful that the previous administration and the board went through an exercise to see what might be possible in the future for the Banff Centre, but frankly we’ve really now just modified that plan to begin first, and to focus most primarily, on the buildings that we already have on this really extraordinary campus, many of which are very old.’
We hear that the coming week’s issue (cover date May 9) of Canada’s national news magazine, Maclean’s, has as its cover story “The Heiress, the Impresario, and the Juiciest Divorce Ever: How an epic marital meltdown exposed scandal at the top of the Canadian arts world”.
The death has been reported of Alexander Galkovsky, violist of the Shostakovich String Quartet from 1972 to 2004 and later of the New Russian Quartet.
He taught at the Moscow Conservatoire from 1990.
The Lebrecht Album of the Week is a Mahler 3rd symphony from Dallas. Any good?
On first hearing, this performance is efficient and attractive with sustainable speeds and some fetching solos from the concertmaster, Alexander Kerr. The vocal soloist Kelley O’Connor lacks heft and any dimension of the ominous in her Nietzschean admonition, but that may be a balancing fault in the hall rather than a conductor or singer shortcoming. The choirs do their bims and bams with every possible display of enthusiasm, and then some.
It takes a second hearing to determine what’s missing…
We have received the following account of recent events from the Romanian conductor Tiberiu Soare, formerly interim general manager of the Bucharest National Opera. If you have any questions for him, post them in Comments.
Hello everybody! This is the dark and sinister “maestro” Soare writing here. … Let me introduce myself: I was indeed a permanent conductor at the National Opera House here, in Bucharest for 8 years, between 2005 and 2013. I was competing then with four other gifted young conductors, who are still among my friends and colleagues. I have conducted here over 120 performances (both opera and ballet titles), among which over 10 premieres (Don Pasquale, Mefistofele by Boito, Oedipe by Enesco, Swan Lake, etc.). In time, I’ve became very good friend with many of the artists here: soloists, orchestra and choir members, dancers, and so on. We’ve really felt like an artistic family here!
I’ve left this position (at my own will!) in April 2013, when the management of Razvan Ioan Dinca made very clear for me that this was not a place for me to stay anymore. Between 2012-2015 I’ve held also the position of Principal Conductor at the National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Romania. I was also visiting professor at the National University of Music for some years (orchestra conducting/score analysis). I was born here, in Bucharest (1977) in a good but not very rich family.
I’ve never have had any pollitical connections in my life (in fact I’m not interested at all in this matter and I don’t vote, as a personal option). Useless to say, never have met mayor Negoita in my existence (I really don’t know why this should be something infamant, maybe he is an honourable person, I really don’t know). The concert you’re pointing at was hosted by a cultural foundation financed by the city authorities, indeed, but this is normal here in Romania: the state supports classical music from public funds, you may ask any romanian musician. I’m quite a normal person: driving my eight year son (Alexandru) at school in the morning, studying orchestra scores during nights (I really love spending time with Mozart, Mahler, Enesco and the rest of the pack), meeting friends and reading good books (by the way, I’m honoured to be hosted here by Mr. Norman Lebrecht: his tremendous writing “Why Mahler” is on a shelve in my study room, full of coffee stains and adnotations).
Speaking about books, I’ve also wrote two: “What are we going to the Opera for?” and, very recently, “Nine musical stories” (some personal impressions about meeting great composers via their music scores, not encyclopedias). I don’t remember ever hating somebody, but I do love any musician and artist. And Opera: for me it’s the everlasting spiritual home. I can say that I breathe Opera.
Now, let me explain some minor details: first of all, one month ago I was invited by the Ministry of Culture to take over ad interim this general manager post. That meant that I’ve blew over my entire life (cutting off my concerts in the near future, saying good-bye for a while to my loved music scores and books and really missing my boy and my family for entire days). Anyway, studying the institutional structure like an orchestra score (analysis professor, remember?) I’ve found out here many wrong things. I admire any gifted artist (Kobborg and Alina included) but this is not about Art: it’s about public money, law and my signature under them. I’ve decided not to assume something wich I’ve considered not right. I’ve never fired anybody, just forbidding Mr. Kobborg to use fictive titles on a public site. That’s all. Never threatened any artist, never discussing about nationality or race.
Furthermore, there are many issues that I’ve dealt with, not only de “Artistic Director (Ballet)” thing. For example: about 11 million euros spent on a major renovation of our Opera House few years ago. The whole work stopped unfinished just before the presidential elections in November 2014. The money-gone, the building- a shame. Any suggestions? I could go on like this for long, maybe I’ll find time to write you again. Let me say this: I’m a honest musician, not a monster. And I don’t care about image wars: I’m the first to admit that it’s not a great thing this what I’m trying to do here, but don’t judge me. Try to be sure that you have the whole picture first. And then we can have a decent dialogue. All the best!
You may wish to refresh memory with an independent account of events from Bucharest blogger, Despre Opera (in English) here.
Finland’s musical dominance is under threat from cost-cutters.
Teachers at the Department of Musicology at Helsinki University have been told that their permanent positions are to be discontinued. Professor Eero Tarasti, author of 103 papapers, says the Department of Musicology has been effectively shut: ‘This means that a bond that has existed since 1640 has been shut down – – and it means a great loss to our national identity’.
Our correspondent adds:
Musicology at Helsinki University dates back to 1640 when the University of Turku was founded by the order of Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1820s the seat was changed to Helsinki by order of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. Over 375 years, teachers in the Musicology department have included Friedrich Pacius, Robert Kajanus, Jean Sibelius, Leevi Madetoja, Erkki Salmenhaara and Kalevi Aho.
Musicology will still be taught at the Sibelius Academy, but the studies there have a different profile: at the Helsinki University the studies in Musicology are more theoretically focused while in Sibelius Academy the focus is on instrumental teaching.
Kalevi Aho has addressed a personal appeal to the prime minister: ‘Finland will never be a financial superpower. If we have something to give to the world, it’s art and culture.’
Anthea Kreston, the American violinist in the Artemis Quartet, has reached her 20th concert with the ensemble – a home town debut, with a raging flu. And a wedding to organise in two days.
All in this week’s instalment of Anthea’s must-read diary.
Last night was our Berlin debut. The Artemis has its own series at the Philharmonie, which is one of the most incredible halls I have played in. That was concert #20 for me/us, and it felt terrific. The hall is a 360 degree hall, with layered irregular large balconies fanning out from the sunken stage like petals from a flower. The sound is crystal clear, direct, and generous. I tend to be one of the earlier quartet players at rehearsals and before concerts – since I am still gaining my sea legs, it gives me a chance to play by myself in the hall and get used to the sound, and wiggle out any nerves which may surface. Some of the scarier moments, like the beginning of the second movement of Op. 59 #1, with its pp beginning, rhythmic precision, and many unavoidable string crossings, are good to play many times to make sure that musicality, and not details, are paramount.
We had several days off, and then Gregor and I both got a terrible flu. We were supposed to rehearse the newly composed piece by Demetz, the Italian composer who was selected from hundreds of submissions to the Artemis Quartet Composition Competition. We have all been working on our parts in anticipation of this week, because Demetz flew in to attend our rehearsals. The first day scheduled I was completely knocked out with fever, and the second day Gregor was out. Ecki, Vinny and I met anyway with Demetz to work through the piece and get insight into characters and ask questions.
Luckily the first performance is still a month away. The piece, “Broken Islands”, is incredible – five larger movements and three miniature movements in a row – inspired by his kayak trip through islands by Vancouver Island. Tone rows and pentatonic layering are hidden if you look closely, and he has a very interesting technique of mixing textures in short notes – for example – one person plays ponticello (on the bridge) while another plucks behind the bridge – creating a new sound world.
The day of the concert we met in the morning to rework some sections, and to do some metronome training. Although Gregor and I still were fighting fevers, it was great to be back playing and rehearsing. During our dress rehearsal, I was concerned about Gregor – he was glazed and flushed – but he insisted on being present. My nose was absolutely plugged, and I forgot my nose spray – so I was playing with my mouth open to breath. Not attractive. Gregor was able to find some nose spray for me, and I took some Advil and a cold tablet.
When you play a concert, somehow any sickness suspends, and you are able to completely concentrate and make it through. I remember one instance when I had a terrible stomach flu, and was sick immediately before, during intermission, and again at the end of the concert. This was the case today, except my nose started to run like crazy during the Beethoven. I made huge sniffs every time there was a loud part, and inelegant wipes to the back of my hand at every rest. Then, when all was almost lost, Gregor’s G string broke in the last movement. It was a miracle – I was moments away from a waterfall which I could not hold back. I left stage with him and blew my nose while he changed his string. We began the last movement again and had a lovely encore of Mozart.
This week, we returned from our amazing days in Oregon, where we were met by 40 old friends at our favorite bakery, and got married. Jason and I have been together for 19 years, and have official status as Domestic Partners, but never felt the need to be married. Our kids were in our wills and life insurance policies, and in Oregon, Domestic Partnership holds the same benefits as a married couple. But it became clear that this is not the case in Germany.
Our status here was that I was a single mother of 2, and Jason was just a single guy. This means that health insurance and work visas are extremely complex, and since Jason doesn’t have any work here, the ability to get a work visa is basically impossible. Not good. Not good at all. We had two days to do this – on Thursday we went to get the license and the $10 24-hour rush license, instead of the mandatory 3 day wait. They were able to get us in the next morning to be married by the official in the office. We all headed to the Goodwill store, where the girls and Jason and grandma helped me choose between the 10 available dresses – ranging from 1950’s to contemporary. There was even one that looked exactly like Princess Diana’s – satin, huge bows, shorter in front, and a 10 foot train. We chose one from the 70’s – high lace collar, and a pretty and simple layered skirt. The girls each chose a dress, and we bought three vails and three pairs of shoes for the girls and I.
We were trying to look exactly like the wedding sticker book that our daughters like, and I must say we got pretty close. That was $123. The license was $70, flowers from the grocery store $29 and cake from the bakery (we just walked there after the courthouse) was $22. $244, 20 hours of prep, and one of the best weddings I have ever attended. The officiant was lovely, the girls dropped petals, and grandma and grandpa were there, and we each got to pick our cake. Just perfect.
We still don’t have a working sink, and no chairs yet, but we found out that our daughter made it into the JFK international school last night. So exciting. Tomorrow we will go buy some chairs. The adventure continues!
(c) Anthea Kreston/Slipped Disc
A French contestant Virginie Verrez bucked serious odds to win first prize and $10,000 at the 28th Annual Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition.
Virginie Verrez, a member of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, made her Met debut this season as the Madrigalist in a new production of Manon Lescaut and will return to the Met as Stéphano in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, conducted by Dallas’s Emmanuel Villaume.
His only heir was his brother Edouard, who died in 1960, unleashing a bitter and complex legal battle over the rights which at times has involved Edouard’s nurse and her husband, great-nephews and even a legal director of SACEM.
But on Sunday, the royalties will cease to be paid as Bolero enters the public domain — and belongs to the world.
UPDATE:
Ravel on his Bolero:
Je retiens le Boléro comme la plus insolente monstruosité jamais perpétrée dans l’histoire de la musique. Du début à la fin de ses 339 mesures, ce n’est simplement que l’incroyable répétition du même rythme (…) avec la récurrence implacable d’un air de cabaret, d’une accablante vulgarité, qui n’a rien à envier, pour l’essentiel de son caractère, aux hurlements d’un chat tapageur dans une ruelle somber
Source: Edward Robinson, « The naive Ravel », The American Mercury, mai 1932, p. 115-122
First prize at the Wigmore Hall’s hotly contested Kathleen Ferrier award was divided between tenor Alessandro Fisher, 27, and baritone James Newby, 23.
Both are at the start of their careers, making appearances at this summer’s festival operas.
