Vlada Borovko, soprano, Russia, 29 Rupert Enticknap, countertenor, UK, 30 Davide Giusti, tenor, Italy, 30 Leon Kim, baritone, South Korea, 30 Ruslana Koval, soprano, Ukraine, 27 Kristina Mkhitaryan, soprano, Russia, 30 Maria Mudryak, soprano, Kazakhstan, 23 Emmett O’Hanlon, baritone, USA, 27
So Young Park, soprano, South Korea, 31 Boris Prýgl, bass-baritone, Czech Republic, 25 Oksana Sekerina, soprano, Russia, 30 Levy Sekgapane, tenor, South Africa, 26 Adela Zaharia, soprano, Romania, 29
Sooyeon Lee, soprano, South Korea, 28
Emmett is based in Chicago, Rupert in Berlin.
The Dutch Strauss-master screened last weekend’s Maastricht concert to 586 venues across the UK and Ireland.
The box-office numbers are just in. Rieu made £1,447,086, more than any concert ever screened in UK cinemas.
He is now about to screen the concert in 700 cinemas in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Poland, Israel, followed by France, Germany, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil later this year, bringing the total to 1,500.
The National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, 115 young musicians, leaves today for a tour of three Latin American countries – Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico – working with young musicians in all three nations. Marin Alsop conducts.
The NYO’s founder, Carnegie Hall chief Clive Gillinson says the orchestra will ‘serve as great musical ambassadors for their country.’
That’s the country whose president was elected on a promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay.
Extraordinary times.
The first review is online. It’s by Shirley Apthorp in the FT and it lays Barrie Kosky’s production concept succinctly on the line:
A caricature Jew, with hooked nose and evil grin, swells up to engulf the entire stage. Its hot air ballon head then deflates, until only the star of David skullcap can be seen. The Bayreuth Festival is once again wrestling with the spectre of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, and its own guilty past with Adolf “Uncle Wolf” Hitler.
Barrie Kosky is the first Jewish stage director to work at Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival, and the first non-member of the Wagner family to stage Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Of course he sees Sixtus Beckmesser as a Jewish parody, the epitome of all that Wagner hated.
A musical instrument seller has been arrested in Tokyo for allegedly breaking into her ex-husband’s workshop in Nagoya and smashing 54 violins, worth $1 million, during their divorce proceedings three years ago.
The suspect has been named as Midori Kawamiya, 34.
The luthier’s identity has been withheld. He is described as a 64 year-old Norwegian.
Its founder Somtow Sucharitkul has issued this final warning: ‘Opera Siam faces its fourth and most serious existential crisis in 17 years. We are going to run out of funds in only a few days.’
He adds: ‘Tonight I’m performing the Mozart Coronation Mass and other works with our kids and with many volunteer choirs including one that came all the way from Lithuania to work with us, at their own expense. In the last 17 years I’ve often been heartened by the generosity of artists and music lovers. Tomorrow we leave to Malaysia where we will do a big concert which not only celebrates our young artists but will be the first performance of some of the HM King Bhumibol’s songs in the city of Johor Bahru.
‘There’s a very good chance that if our existential threat is not resolved, that tonight’s concert will be the last time will be able to perform for you.’
Barbara Blakeley, who married Zeppo Marx in 1959 and Frank Sinatra in 1976, has died in Rancho Mirage, California, at the age of 90.
She founded the Barbara Sinatra Center for Abused Children on Bob Hope Drive in 1986 with support from Frank.
photo: Palm Springs Life
At Die Meistersinger in Bayreuth last night there was an outbreak of lusty booing for the soprano Anne Schwanewilms.
Much in the production was controversial. Barrie Kosky had reconceived the plot around the thorny relationship between the Wagner family and their Parsifal conductor, Hermann Levi, son of a chief rabbi.
The final scenes are set in what looks like a Nuremberg tribunal.
photos: Bayreuth Festspiele
All of these ideas could have been legitimately booed and Kosky’s production team were duly received with opprobrium.
But the loudest, most concentrated catcalls were saved for a German soprano who was simply giving her best as Eva.
Why do Germans do that?
American, British, Russian and French audiences are generally respectful of singers. Germans feel free to boo artists. Why is that?
Claire Chase has joined Harvard as Practice. She has given more than 100 world premieres of new works for flute.
Harvard has also recruited jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding.
The Guardian has an obit for the heroic Kitty Lux, founder of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, which has the great distinction of playing both at the BBC Proms and at Glastonbury.
Kitty made it to the Proms weeks after receiving a kidney transplant.
She leaves quirky memories of an uncategorisable Proms night. They don’t make them like that any more.
This is Sarah Hughes on her way to play.
Sarah is a composer, saxophonist and teacher.
And this is what happened to her:
I was carjacked last night by a pair of boys, approximately 16 and 14 years of age. I was parked and ready to attend a jam session at E23rd and N Calvert in Baltimore when I was attacked. They threw me into the street from my car after punching my mouth six times and kicking me too. As the one who punched me got into the back seat with my saxophone I pleaded for him to let me keep it but he just said “no bitch” and as I clung to the door frame, they sped away. I flagged down someone in the street and they let me use their phone to call the police. I reported the make and model (Hyundai Elantra) and my license plate (1CR3563) immediately, and also told them my saxophone, purse, keys, phone, and wallet (with $150 in cash from my gig that day :(( were all taken from me. The police said they would send someone. When the cop showed up 15 – 20 minutes later he asked what my license plate was because the dispatcher did not record it. :-0 They then made the alert that my car was stolen, asking me two more times for the car’s information. Please, if you can help me look out for my horn in pawn shops, I would really appreciate that. It’s a Selmer Mark VI with the serial number 236676.
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra has appointed Michael Thornton, principal horn with the Colorado Symphony since 1997, and David Grossman, presently a member of the New York Philharmonic, as principal double-bass.
