Bogdan Roscic, who was announced this morning as the next director of the Vienna State Opera, is the second successive head of the Sony Classical label to run an international house.
His predecessor, Peter Gelb, has been general manager of the Metropolitan Opera since 2006.
Neither Gelb nor Roscic had prior experience of running an opera house.
Gelb’s plan for the Met has been movie-driven. He launched Live from the Met in cinemas across the world and imported Hollywood-style directors to liven up his new productions.
The consequence has been a catastrophic fall in ticket sales, from near-capacity to below 70 percent.
The medicine may have worked, but the patient is dying. Over time, Gelb realised just how much he had bitten off.
What Roscic plans for the Vienna Opera remains to be revealed. But he was chosen, as Gelb was, for his reputed success at Sony Classical – actually, a steep sales decline – and he will be keen to put his mus-biz genius to work on a stately institution that is achieving its best results for years.
Stand by for the Met Story, mark 2.
Rudolf Tang has spotted any number of fake-name orchestras that are touring China at present.
The German Radio orchestra, for instance.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Rome
The Austrian Mahler Philharmonic
The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra…. The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra was initiated by distinguished maestro Mr. Jed Gaylin, gathering many extremely talented artists who had passed strict examinations. These artists meet the highest performance standards in the United States as well as worldwide. The Orchestra is not only devoted to explore classical music, but also continues to explore modern music tracks, and thus is appreciated by classical music fans and popular music fans alike.
If you have been approached by anyone organising these phoney bands, please let us know. If you are already touring with one of them, make sure you get paid up front.
Meet Kayleigh Rogers. She is ten years old, has autism and ADHD. Kayleigh attends Killard House School in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland.
The Christmas version that she sings of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is being watched the world over after both BBC and ITV featured it on their news shows. Calls are pouring in to her little town, offering comfort and joy.
Robertson, New York based, is also music director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia. He’ll be done in St Louis in 2019.
Some months ago, the Austrian cultural minister Thomas Drozda told the general director of the Vienna State Opera, Dominique Meyer, that he would be required to reapply for his job.
Meyer, 61, must have wondered why, but he had been in post for ten years and he may have assumed that this was an obscure Austria regulation dating back to Habsburg times. A Frenchman who is fluent in German he’d had plenty of opportunities to observe the little quirks that make Austria that little bit different from any place on earth.
He duly reapplied for the job, expecting that, after ten years of record attendance – over 98 percent – vastly increased revenues and a progressive streaming policy, his reappointment for five more years would be a foregone conclusion.
When we met in London for tea a few weeks ago there were no obvious clouds on the horizon, other than the possibility that Austria would elect a fascist president, in which case Meyer assured me he would resign.
Drozda, however, had other ideas. A former business chief of Vienna’s Burgtheater, he was not so much a minister as a meddler. Drozda hasd also been director of the Austrian theatres association, a position which gave him overview of confidential information across the industry.
He decided – for reasons which he has not specified – to get rid of a tried, tested and extremely popular director of the Vienna Opera and replace him with a man from the record business who would not list personal charm and staff loyalty among his principal attributes.
Bogdan Roscic, an Austrian nationalised ex-Yugoslav, has never cast an opera in his life, or run a company on the scale of the Vienna Opera. He is as different from Meyer as plum slivovitz from premier cognac. Meyer gets things done by persuasion, Roscic by abrasion.
But the minister of culture has the power to chop heads. And in a year when an untested businessman was elected to the White House in preference to an experienced politician, Drozda may have decided that getting rid of Meyer was a trendy thing to do, going along with the zeitgeist.
From an objective perspective, it’s an unnecessary risk.
Meyer has been an outstandingly successful head of the Vienna Opera. He will go on to other, greater things. His successor will face resentment, suspicion and more than a little difficulty in assembling the stellar casts that Meyer could call in at the touch of a phone. Not unlike Donald J. Trump he may struggle to hire pedigree artists for his inaugural show. Today’s announcement is a bad decision by a weak politician.
Opera is the loser. Vienna Opera est perdita.
Queues outside the Vienna Opera last year awaiting first copies of Meyer’s season brochure
The general director of the Vienna State Opera has just issued a dignified statement in the thick of a political storm.
Yesterday, to my regret, I was told that my contract will not be prolonged again, but today I would like to focus on the positive side of things.
I am very grateful to the Austrian state to have given me the opportunity to spend 10 years (13 even, including the period of designation) in the service of this wonderful institution, surrounded by a competent and dedicated team, which has always supported me. I will continue to do my job with the same enthusiasm until the end of my term
in 2020.
I wish much luck and success to my successor Bogdan Roščić for the fulfilling and challenging task which awaits him. When I was informed about the decision, I assembled all members of the management staff and asked them to support the new director in the implementation of all his projects, in order to secure the Wiener Staatsoper a bright future.
It has just been announced in Vienna that the next director of the Staatsoper will be… (fanfare) … Bogdan Roscic.
He will succeed Dominique Meyer in 2020.
The head of Sony Classical, Roscic has promoted the para-classical acts of Il Volo, Jackie Evancho and Leona Lewis. It may be safely assumed that none of these will pass a casting audition at the Vienna Opera.
Roscic, 52, is a former head of Universal Classics in Austria, head of A&R at Deutsche Grammophon and, later, president of the Decca label.
At Sony, he signed a long-running contract with the Vienna Philharmonic for the New Year’s Day concert.
His closest conductor connection is with Teodor Currentzis.
