Lawrence Brownlee has a son who’s on the spectrum. So he’s getting on his bike.

If you’d like to help, here’s the link.

The singer, who is 73, announced today that he has lived with another man for 39 years.

Just before the world forgot he’s still around.

We wish the couple every happiness.

The Russian-based Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis signed on today as chief conductor of the SWR radio symphony orchestra in Stuttgart, starting in 2018-19.

 

Currentzis, 45, has made his career up to now entirely in Russia, as music director in Perm, and on record.

But is seems he is ready to branch out.

 

In July he will make his Salzburg debut with La Clemenza di Tito and next season he is booked at Covent Garden.

An orchestra in the German heartland will give him a significantly larger footprint.

The New York Times announces today that the American diva’s last Rosenkavalier at the Met on May 13 will also be her farewell to opera.

Ms Fleming is 58, the same age as her mentor Leontyne Price was when she called it quits. She has been quietly winding down her opera commitments for several years.

The article, which will not appear in the print edition until April 9, has all the hallmarks of a high-class PR coup. A fond smile, a tear, and four times as long as necessary.

 

photo: Dale Wilcox/Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Unlike Ms Fleming, who times everything to perfection.

The international podium is absolutely awash in Finns, but no Norwegian would (pace the Beatles) get to conduct the Vienna Opera.

Until last night, that is, when Eivind Gullberg Jensen broke the ice in Tosca.

Der Iceman Cometh

 

John Kaboff was thrown off an American Airlines flight from Washington to Chicago after his cello, sitting in the paid-for seat beside him, was declared to be a security risk.

Kaboff says, ‘I was mortified to have to be removed from a flight, like I just committed a crime.’

 

 

He has flown AA 40 times in three years with his cello and without incident.

It’s getting nasty out there.

He will conduct the opera for the first time at the Baden-Baden Festival.

Like many who grew up on Grove’s Dictionary, he did not regard Puccini as a priority.

press release:

Fünfte Osterfestspiele Baden-Baden der Berliner Philharmoniker starten mit „Tosca“

Sir Simon Rattle gibt sein „Tosca“-Debüt, Gastdirigate von Kirill Petrenko und Zubin Mehta sowie Soloauftritte von Pinchas Zukerman und Lisa Batiashvili

Baden-Baden, 5.4.2017: Die Proben zu den fünften Osterfestspielen Baden-Baden der Berliner Philharmoniker sind in vollem Gange. Neben den Bühnenproben zu Giacomo Puccinis „Tosca“ als zentraler Oper der diesjährigen Festspiele beginnen am heutigen Mittwoch ebenfalls die Konzertproben. In den Hauptrollen der Oper sind Kristine Opolais (Floria Tosca), Marcelo Álvarez (Cavaradossi) und Evgeny Nikitin (Scarpia) zu erleben. Die Regie führt Philipp Himmelmann. Vom 7. bis 17. April finden vier Opernaufführungen statt, es gibt fünf große symphonische Abende sowie 14 kammermusikalische Meisterkonzerte.

 

 

photo: Baden-Baden/Rittershaus

Lukas Crepaz (r.), 35, is the festival’s new business manager, joining artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser and festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler.

 

The company has released next season’s programme. It includes an opera, Cinderella, by the British child prodigy, Alma Deutscher. Full details:

Prokofiev, The Gambler (4. October 2017 – D: Simone Young; R: Karoline Gruber; mit: Dan Paul Dumitrescu, Elena Guseva, Misha Didyk, Linda Watson, Thomas Ebenstein, Elena Maximova, Morten Frank Larsen);

*
Berg, Lulu (3 December 2017 – D: Ingo Metzmacher; R: Willy Decker; mit: Agneta Eichenholz, Angela Denoke,
Bo Skovhus, Herbert Lippert, Franz Grundheber);

*
Handel, Ariodante (24 February 2018 – D: William  Christie; R: David McVicar; mit: Sarah Connolly, Chen Reiss, Hila Fahima, Christophe Dumaux, Rainer Trost, Pavel Kolgatin, Wilhelm Schwinghammer);

*
Von Einem, Dantons Tod (24. March 2018 – D: Susanna Mälkki; R: Josef Ernst Köpplinger; mit: Wolfgang Koch, Herbert Lippert, Jörg Schneider, Thomas Ebenstein, Olga Bezsmertna);

*
Saint-Saëns, Samson et Dalila (12. May 2018 – D: Marco Armiliato; R: Alexandra Liedtke; mit: Elīna Garanča, Roberto Alagna, Carlos Álvarez, Sorin Coliban)

*
Weber, Der Freischütz (11. June 2018 – D: Tomáš Netopil, R: Christian Räth; mit Adrian Eröd, Camilla Nylund, Alan Held, Andreas Schager, Daniela Fally, Albert Dohmen)

*

Alma Deutschers Cinderella (28. January 2018 in der AGRANA STUDIOBÜHNE| WALFISCHGASSE; D: N. N.; R: Birgit Kajtna)

Alma Deutscher is 12 years old. Erich Wolfgang Korngold was 13 when his balet, The Snowman, was staged at the Vienna Opera, in the presence of the Emperor Franz-Josef.

We have received pictures of the latest Government-inspired thuggery in Caracas.

A horn player is snatched off the streets. His name, we think, is Frederick Pinto.

And the operatic tenor Victor Lopez Pacheco is beaten with a stick by the Venezuelan National Guard.

The ‘socialist’ regime in Caracas is warmly supported by Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and the rest of the British Labour leadership.

 

Karl Heinrich Ehrenforth, one of the leading scholars in the development of music education, has died in Reinbek, near Hamburg, at the age of 87.

Unlike most professors, he spent 16 years teaching high school before he was offered a conservatory position, at Detmold.

He published extensively on the history and theory of music education.

 

It’s 120 years ago to the day that the old boy breathed his last.

So: a good time to play a game I last tried out with Menahem Pressler and the Emerson Quartet.

A hundred and twenty years is not that long ago.

How many people have you known who saw Brahms alive, shook his hand, exchanged a greeting?

In my case, just one: my neighbour, Eleanor Rosé.

Plus quite a few who knew his at one remove – London musicians who played with Felix Weingartner, for instance.

Name yours.

This is Brahms shortly after Clara Schumann’s funeral.

UPDATE: And who did you know who knew Mahler?