Over four decades, the artist known as ‘ROSALIE’ has been at the heart of the visual evolution of German opera.

She designed the 1994 Bayreuth Ring and worked regularly with Stuttgart, Berlin, Zurich and Leipzig, where her final production – Salome – will open this weekend. She also worked at La Scaa, Seville and t the national theatre in Tokyo.

Rosalie, whose birth name was Gudrun Müller, died on Monday in Stuttgart at the age of 64.


photo: Stutgart Opera/Daniel Mayer

Carrie Dennis has vanished from the LA Philharmonic.

Her name has been removed from the orchestra’s website, and she has deleted the LA Phil from her personal online profile.

No-one is saying what’s going on. The LA Phil told Slipped Disc: ‘We never comment on personnel issues.’ Ms Dennis has not responded to contact requests.

But her absence cannot be concealed. Ms Dennis, recruited to Los Angeles in 2008 from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, is one of the LA Phil’s most visible artists. According to an LA Times profile: ‘In most performances, the orchestra’s principal violist pops out of the picture.  She dives down on a given accent, thrusts into the heart of it with startling vigor, her head impelled to her knees, her elbow raised high as she strikes her bow across the strings. By the final cadence, her neatly arranged hair is flying loose. Whatever it takes.’

So what happened?

One reader tells us: ‘About two weeks ago, I attended a LA Phil performance at Disney Hall, at which Dennis performed. The very next day, I attended the same program, but Dennis was not in her seat at curtain call. The musicians looked perplexed. Then, the stage manager ordered the viola section to re-seat, and they did. I figured Dennis came down with a sudden illness or something.’

That’s all we know, so far.

We wish Ms Dennis well.

 

The Lithuanian Government last night sacked Gintautas Kevisas as director of the national opera and ballet, a position he had occupied for 15 years. The reason given was ‘conflict of interest’.

The entrepreneurial Kevisas was accused of making contracts on behalf of the national opera through his own private companies. Three of these contracts were with Angela Gheorghiu, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The amounts involved, in a single year, came to 390,000 Euros.

When the Government began its investigation, the manager of the Metropolitan Opera wrote a letter to the Lithuanian minister of culture declaring his ‘enthusiastic support’ for Gintautas Kevisas. The minister appears to have decided that Peter Gelb’s commendation was not enough to save the director’s job. The inquiry commission ruled that ‘Gintautas Kėvišas systematically confused public and private interests.’

Kevisas, 62, was previously manager of the Lithuanian National Philharmonic and founder of the Vilnius Festival. He has connections to many artists and is said to have organised more than 80 concerts for the late Yehudi Menuhin.

Fergus Davidson had his flute and piccolo stolen near Kings Cross station on June 9.

The flute is an Arista, serial no 518, headjoint no 309.

The piccolo is a Reiner, serial no 857

Call police if you are offered them for sale. Stop those thieves.

Paul Phillips has been named director of orchestral studies at Stanford, as well as music director of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Philharmonia. Phillips, 61, has been at Brown University since 1989.

 

Apart from the four big-stick cancellations, the Venezuelan Rafael Payare has just told the Luxembourg Phil he’s too sick to conduct. Dmitri Liss will stand in.

And the Czech Juraj Valcuha has cancelled on the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

Marzena Diakun is flying in from Warsaw to make her Merseyside debut.

Paul Zukofsky, one of the most intelligent soloists on the US scene and perhaps the most challenging, died on June 6 in Hong Kong, aged 73. The cause was non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A Galamian student at Juilliard, Paul Zukofsky made his Carnegie Hall debut in a Mozart concerto, aged nine. He went on to apply himself to new music, working closely with John Cage, Elliott Carter and the minimalists. He gave the world premiere of Philip Glass’s violin concerto and appeared in the role of Einstein in Einstein on the Beach. 

He made at least 60 recordings, almost all of modern music. Among other composers in his portfolio were Milton Babbitt, George Crumb, Morton Feldman, Ralph Shapey, Charles Wuorinen and Iannis Xenakis. He also taught at Julliard and elsewhere, greatly encouraging many young violinists.

In the early 1990s, Paul was head of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute when the University of Southern California decided to throw it off the campus. Paul assisted in the process by which the Schoenberg Nachlass was transferred to Vienna. He was also the custodian of the works of his own father, the poet Louis Zukofsky.


Just in, from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra:

Conductor Kirill Petrenko unfortunately has had to cancel his concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on 14, 15 and 16 June for health reasons.

 

The orchestra is very grateful to conductor Cristian Macelaru for stepping in on such short notice. He will make his debut with the orchestra.

The programme will undergo a few changes. Instead of Symphonia Domestica by Richard Strauss, the orchestra will perform Death and Transfiguration by the same composer, followed by Richard Wagner’s Overture to Tannhäuser. The programme before the intermission will remain unchanged: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491, featuring Radu Lupu.

Summer may be clearout time, but the Milwaukee Symphony is ushering out eight players at a go, which (as Damon Runyon would have said) is more than somewhat.

The departing players are former associate concertmaster Anne de Vroome Kamerling, violinists Andrea Wagoner, Les Kalkhof, and Taik-ki Kim, cellists Elizabeth Tuma and Margaret Wunsch, assistant principal flute Jeani Foster and pianist Wilanna Kalkhof.

Together they represent more than three centuries of playing experience.

More here.

Xian Zhang, who has been adding extra jobs in the past two years, is no longer music director of La Verdi Symphony Orchestra in Milan.

Her successor was named today. He’s the veteran Klaus Peter Flor.

Xian Zhang, 44, is music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and principal guest of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. She is presently one of the judges at BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.