Sven Müller, who succeeded Keith Warner as artistic director of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, has resigned over the same issue – savage cuts.
The Government wants to reduce the orchestra musicians to 75 percent contracts and shed several jobs.
Report here (in Danish).
Copenhagen has an eye-catching 2005 opera house it never needed and cannot afford to cast a season.
Where’s Borgen when you really need her?
Forumopera reports the death of Georgette Boué, known as ‘Geori’, star of Sasha Guitry’s film Malibran and hand-picked by Sir Thomas in 1947 for a recording of one of his favourite operas, Gounod’s Faust.
She was married to the baritone Roger Bourdin, who died in 1973.
It’s not just Al Capone who packed a rod in his fiddle box.
A woman walking in the woods near the Boathouse at Fletcher’s Cove on Wednesday found a violin case containing at least one firearm, and police said they discovered other weapons strewn along the C&O Canal.
At least a dozen police officers descended on the area near the boathouse late Wednesday morning. Authorities called in an explosive ordnance disposal unit, or bomb squad, to help with the search as additional weapons were found.
More here.
The Miami Herald is no longer worth reading.
It used to employ Lawrence A. Johnson as music critic. When his job was eliminated in 2008, the paper continued to carry paid reports from his South Florida Classical Review.
Now the Herald has told him it has neither the space nor the cash for classical and opera reports.
Larry says: ‘I knew this day would come. That’s why I started South Florida Classical Review in the first place. Our Florida advertisers have been fantastic and supportive. As long as that continues, SFCR will continue to cover the local music beat with the same quality and comprehensiveness we always have.’
Why buy a newspaper that doesn’t write about the things that interest you?
The ambitious Kansas City Symphony is just $3m short of a $55 million endowment target.
Why to they need the money? The first reason given by executive director Frank Byrne is to be ‘competitive by continuing to attract and retain the best musicians.’
At present, KC pays 41 percent less in player wages than other US orchestras of comparable size.
Set them a mannequin challenge:
Mannequin Challenge: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
The ever-troubled mega-agency has lost another of its neglected talents.
Isang Enders, principal cello of the Dresden Staatskapelle at 20, is not getting much action from his IMG agent.
So he switched (we hear) to AlliedRayfield.
Like so many others, Isang decided boutique is best.
Kasper Holten, ex-director of the Royal Opera, tweets that it’s George Benjamin’s Written on Skin.
Skin, which I disliked, would not make the cut in my top 10:
1 John Adams, Doctor Atomic (2005)
2 Desyatnikov, The Children of Rosenthal (2005) – newly out on record
3 Daniel Catan, Il Postino (2010)
4 Turnage, Anna Nicole (2011)
5 Nico Muhly, Two Boys (2011)
6 Jimmy Lopez, Bel Canto (2015)
7 Jake Heggie, Great Scott (2015)
8 Jennifer Higdon, Cold Mountain (2015)
9 Missy Mazzoli, Breaking the Waves (2016)
10 Miroslav Srnka, South Pole (2016) – probably the best of them all.
Agree?
The president-elect tweeted yesterday:
Jackie Evancho’s album sales have skyrocketed after announcing her Inauguration performance.
Er, until you look at the numbers.
Vanity Fair crunches the Nielsen stats: According to Nielsen numbers cited in Bilboard, Evancho’s Someday at Christmas sold 94 percent more albums in the chart week ending December 22 than it did the week prior. That is a larger increase than the average holiday album spike, which Billboard placed at 21 percent. But there’s another catch, the publication notes: in actual numbers, the spike was a mere 5,000 copies. When the number you’re starting at is small, it doesn’t take much to make a big percent increase.
An increase of 5,000 sales is not a skyrocket – even for an ‘opera’ singer.
The gifted Rebecca Miller, who has worked with several of the big London orchs, has been named principal conductor of the start-up Bishop’s Stortford Sinfonia.
The Sinfonia is now in its second season.
The Times headline on a report of the death of Georges Pretre:
Now what else would he be known for – the colour of his socks?
Apart from that, Michael Cooper’s prompt report is faultless.
