Cheerfully giving up hs job the British prime minster was clearly heard humming a little theme as he walked through his front door at 10 Downing Street.
But which theme?
Could it be the opening of Shostakovich’s first violin concerto?
UPDATE: here’s another clue.
Spaking at the press tour of the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, the conductor said:
‘When you’re sick and you realize your medicine isn’t working, you have to try something different. That’s what we are doing right now. What has been done over the years in the Middle East had not been productive and has not brought peace. That’s why we are trying something else….
I believe education is much more important than we assume. Today, everyone tends to focus on the economy. Of course, the economy is important. People need to have enough to eat, and have work and money. But there are other things that are important. In the Gaza Strip for example, the average age of the population is 16 or 17. If you don’t do anything to educate the people there, what kind of future will they have?’
More here.
A Charlotte Bronte opera that occupied twenty years of composer John Joubert’s life until its completion in 1997 is to receive its world premiere on 25 October 2016, at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre in Birmingham.
Joubert will turn 90 next year.
A previous Jane Eyre opera by Michael Berkeley and David Malouf was stolen from the composer’s car in 2000. He rewrote it with lighter instrumentation.
press release:
From its first publication in 1847, Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre has inspired innumerable theatrical interpretations for both stage and screen. To mark the 200th anniversary of Brontë’s birth in 2016, and in anticipation of British composer John Joubert’s 90th birthday in 2017, Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra will premiere Joubert’s opera based on Brontë’s first and most popular novel.Jane Eyre will receive its world premiere in a concert performance on 25 October 2016, at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre in Birmingham. The SOMM label will be on hand to capture a live recording which is scheduled to be released in March 2017 to coincide with Joubert’s birthday.
Joubert’s Jane Eyre has been over two decades in the making, yet the seeds were sown as far back as 1969, when the composer penned his song-cycle Six Poems Of Emily Brontë. He became drawn into the world of the Brontë sisters and, perhaps inevitably, Jane Eyre. The result is a major operatic work with “a score of translucent beauty – Joubert’s undoubted magnum opus,” comments conductor Kenneth Woods. For the premiere, soprano Katherine Manley will portray the title character and baritone David Stout – who previously collaborated with Woods on a SOMM recording of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen – will take on the role of Rochester. They will be joined by a full supporting cast. The librettist is Kenneth Birkin, a post-graduate student of Joubert’s at Birmingham University whose Ph.D. focused on the libretti of Strauss’s post-Hofmannsthal operas.
Joubert’s output has been frequently inspired by great literature and he has set song cycles to the words of William Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence, among others. His two other major operas are Silas Marner (George Eliot) and Under Western Eyes(Joseph Conrad). Joubert explains, “The criterion I use for the selection of operatic subjects is that they should comment in some way on basic human issues, thus bringing them into line with the Enlightenment idea of theatre as a ‘School of Morals’.”
Here’s a spot of glasnost:
The European Composition Prize at Young Euro Classic in Berlin wants an audience vote on the winner.
Interested? Call Berlin (030) 884713963
Santa Cruz Symphony has recruited Nigel Armstrong, 26, as its new concertmaster.
A contender at international competitions, Nigel went ‘to live with and learn from the Plum Village community founded by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, where he spent a year working on their organic farm and taking part in their daily life.’
Not your average circuit fiddler, then.
Maralin Niska, who died on Saturday in Santa Fe, sang more leading roles at New York City Opera – 29 – than anyone else.
She made her debut in 1967 in Marriage of Figaro and was the go-to soprano for two decades. She was a standout Salome.
She also appeared at the Met and with other US companies. Maralin would have been 90 in December.
Shelley Moore, who as a child entertained Londoners sheltering in the Underground during the Blitz, has died in the US at the age of 84.
She enjoyed international success with a 1961 album, For the First Time.
Enrique Carreón-Robledo is the new general and artistic director at Opera San Antonio, starting next month.
He succeeds the composer Tobias Picker, who quit at the start of the year.
Enrique has previously conducted Scottish Ballet, West Australian Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet.
Not to be outdone by the Germans, President Hollande has announced in Arles that culture will be ‘a budget priority’ in 2017. He expects to approve an increase in state funding of seven percent.
This is the sort of thing Britain is leaving behind.
According to the latest statistics from Eurostat, more than six million EU citizens work in the cultural industries.
Of these, Germany unsurprisingly has the most with 1.2 million.
The UK is just behind with 1.1m. (Or was.)
The country with the highest percentage of cultural employees in the workforce is Austria, with 3.1%.
