Competition has come alive again on Agents Alley, New York.

CAMI have just signed the young British conductor Courtney Lewis, who is music director in Jacksonville, Florida.

Courtney, 32, is from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

He was previously with Matthew Oberstein at Opus3 Artists. They won’t be pleased.

Holly Braithwaite is a soprano with Opera on Tap in Seattle.

She knows all there is to know about tenors. She’s seen them in the shower.

So when Robert McPherson starts formulating a proposal to her on stage, Holly crouches behind a seat and tries to imagine herself somewhere else.

Then she shrieks something profane.

This is not your ordinary proposal of marriage, promise.

Just watch.

The fading Rolando Villazon has told the ROH he won’t be feeling well enough at the end of next month to sing Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore.

His replacement is the Armenian Liparit Avetisyan.

Ticket-holders have been contacted, say the ROH.

His is not the tenor cancellation the house is really fearing.

AskonasHolt have announced that their young tenor Oliver Johnston is running in next Sunday’s London marathon.

Any other musicians planning to keep him company? Or chase him down?

Let us know if you’re running and we’ll post your pics.

Also runs:

Violinist Amy Cardigan of the BBC Scottish Symph.

The Portuguese baritone Ricardo Panela, presently with Holland Park Opera. He’s fundraising here for the mental health charity, SANE.

Throughout the ISIS occupation, one terrified resident of Mosul has been listening secretly every night to recordings of his favourite artist, Itzhak Perlman.

As soon as it was safe to do so this week, he called a friend, Ameen Muqdad, to come out with his violin.

Read what happened here.

pictures: MosulEye

According to the complaint, filed late Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, the headphone company’s Bose Connect app does more than just pair wireless headphones with the music in their devices — it also connects the user’s entire listening history with third-party data mining companies….

Attorney Chris Dore, whose firm Edelson PC is representing main plaintiff Kyle Zak, who paid $350 for his headphones, in the class-action suit, told NBC News that Bose never informed customers about the data mining.

Read on here.

The British conductor Jeffrey Tate was knighted yesterday by Prince William.

Tate, 74 next week, is chief conductor of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.

Born with spina bifida, he has been principal conductor at Covent Garden, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Sao Carlo theatre in Naples.

photo: PA pool

Siegfried Mauser’s appeal against conviction for sexual molestation of two female academy colleagues has been disrupted by the presentation of new charge against him.

Mauser’s lawyer has dismissed the presentation of a third witness as opportunist. The state is demanding that Mauser’s original one-year sentence be trebled to three years.

The German pianist and musicologist, who is 62,  was president of the Munich Hochschule from 2003 to 2014. He went on to become rector of the Salzburg Mozarteum and director of the city’s biennale until his trial in June 2016.

Latest court report here.

Rory Jeffes is leaving the Sydney Symphony Orchestra after 12 years as executive director to become CEO of Opera Australia.

He takes over from artistic director Lyndon Terracini who has doubled as CEO since Craig Hassall quits earlier this year. Terracini has been renewed as artistic director until 2021.

Nothing much will change.

Speranza Scappucci has been named principal conductor of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège. She starts later this year, and it’s a real coup for the Belgians.

She’s big in Vienna and Amsterdam.

And she has got nice shoes.

Patrick Aspbury, of Chelmsford, was one of three cathedral singers who formed The Choirboys in 2005 and enjoyed a blaze of fame on Decca Records until their voices broke.

Patrick, 23, grew up into a promising young composer.

He was struck last week by a train at Chelmsford station.

There will be an inquest.

l-r: Ben Inman, Patrick Aspbury, and CJ Porter-Thaw

Erato tell us they have spent the last three days recording Berlioz’s Les Troyens in Strasbourg.

It involved the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, three choirs and sixteen soloists over two five-hour concerts with conductor John Nelson, a total of 239 musicians.

The headline artists are the US mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and tenor Michael Spyres and the French-Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.

The set will be released in November.

Photo: Grégory Massat/Erato