Gisela May died on Friday December 2 at the age of 92.
The epic Brecht actress and singer in East Berlin was perhaps the closest in spirit to Lotte Lenya, embracing not only the Weill songs but many of Eisler, Dessau, Hollander and … Jacques Brel.
Texas Classical Review is none too sure about Houston’s world premiere of Jake Heggie’s opera adaptation of a deathless movie.
Sample:
It’s a Wonderful Life makes an effective stage piece, as far as it goes. Yet it stops short of transforming the story’s emotions and drama into arresting music theater. For all its liveliness and theatrical impact, HGO’s production can’t make up for an emotional depth that is missing.
Full review here.
Last night’s premiere of the funeral music Stravinsky wrote for Rimsky-Korsakov has been uploaded.
This is Georg Friedrich Haas, the contemporary Austrian composer, who has talked volubly of his sexual preferences within his marriage in recent months.
It has been quite a media campaign: starting with the New York Times, on to the London Times and today in the Daily Mail (below).
Perhaps it’s time to let the music speak for itself?
Helga Rabl-Stadler, 68, has been prolonged as Festival President for three more years, until end-September 2020.
But the wording of the announcement suggests it may be her last term.
Rabl-Stadler, a member of an influential media family, has been in charge since January 1995.
press release:
In its meeting today, the Supervisory Board of the Salzburg Festival made an important decision regarding the institution’s future.
“Helga Rabl-Stadler will remain Festival President for another three years; her contract was extended until September 30, 2020,” Wilfried Haslauer announced as the legal representative of the Salzburg Festival Fund on December 2, 2016. Raimund Steiner of Egon Zehnder had presented the results of the selection process to the Supervisory Board. “With Helga Rabl-Stadler as President, Markus Hinterhäuser as Artistic Director and the new Business Director Lukas Crepaz, the Festival has an outstanding team leading it into the future,” said Hans Scharfetter, Member of the Salzburg State Parliament and currently Chairman of the Festival’s Supervisory Board.
“I am delighted that the Supervisory Board has expressed its continued trust in me to lead the Festival in the run-up to the anniversary year of 2020. Together with my colleagues in the directorate, I want to broaden and secure the Festival’s organizational and financial basis, which Markus Hinterhäuser needs for his extremely interesting programmes,” said Helga Rabl-Stadler.
“The fact that Helga Rabl-Stadler, with all her experience, loyalty, her wisdom and her keen eye, has been confirmed in her office for another three years is a great stroke of fortune, not just for me, but most importantly for the Salzburg Festival,” declared Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser.
A Utah Symphony cellist John Eckstein has persuaded 14 colleagues and a music director, Thierry Fischer, to join him next spring in desperately impoverished Haiti, creating a national institute for young musicians.
All it takes is one musician and a dream.
Read more here and here.
photo: John Marquis Cahill
Tanya Remenikova, Professor of Cello at University of Minnesota, has posted an appeal for her former student Hong Wang, who ‘was recently diagnosed with stage 4 malignant stomach cancer…Much of his cancer treatment is not covered by his health insurance.’
Hong Wang teaches at Concordia University, St. Paul, Hamline University and Bethel University.
Please help if you can. Click here.
