We had The Exterminating Angel, by Thomas Ades, after the film by Luis Bunuel. An evening-length meander by a huge cast of characters, none of them defined. All the hype in the New York Times can’t get audiences excited about it.
In London, we’re about to see Marnie by Nico Muhly, after Hitchcock, at English National Opera.
Sophie’s Choice was a dire opera at Covent Garden. Dire, dire, dire.
What ever became of Brokeback Mountain, the movie composed by Charles Wuorinen? It premiered in Madrid, was seen once in Germany (at Aachen) and then faded from sight.
Now here’s another one: Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, composed by Keeril Makan, is showing at LA Opera.
Has opera lost all creative invention?
Do we have to cannibalise movies?
Can no-one think of any new stories?
Oh, here’s another: Houston Grand Opera presents, The House without a Christmas Tree, based on a 1972 TV film.
The cellist Yoram Halperin has retired after 46 years.
He was hired by Zubin Mehta in 1971 even though he had never played in an adult orchestra before. ‘The risk’s on me,’ said Zubin.
His father was concertmaster of the Israel Opera. His son is a viola player in the Israel Camerata.
We wish Yoram a happy retirement.
Message to the monoglots at Sony Classical from violinist Renaud Capucon:
‘Olivier MESSIAEN was a Major French composer. His name should be written:”MESSIAEN”,not “MESSAIEN”‘. Rc
The fountains were swtched off Saturday after someone injected a yellow dye into the system.
A political ironist, respondng to the Center’s chickening out of the Philharmonic hall refurbishment?
Next stop, the White House lawn?
Photo: Sean Carroll/Instagram
The rapper Moses Pelham was awarded yesterday the Goetheplakette of the city of Frankfurt.
Pehahm, 46, is famed for such lines as: ‘Rödelheimer Land- /Ecke Kleemannstraße, ist, wo der Shit hier begann’ – which is comprehensible to anyone with more than 20 words of German.
Previous winners of the Goetheplakette include Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, who was certifiably incomprehensible in any language, and Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the great literary critic.
Der Shit, it seems, may have just begann.
Transport for London wants to made Oxford Street a pedestrian zone and run its buses down the parallel Wigmore Street.
That would spell the end of perfect silence in the Wigmore Hall, one of the world’s great chamber music venues.
The classical charts are out and Daniil Trifonov’s Chopin Evocations have knocked Germany’s favourite tenor off his customary position this week at the top of the sales charts.
It’s a damn good record, too.
The entertaining Flute Channel stages a showdown in Montreal.
If you’re a flutie, you cannot afford to miss this.
A new report by Arts Council England, published today amid much back-slapping, finds that the culture sector grew by 10.4% in 2015 to £11.8 billion, five times as fast as the rest of the economy.
But that was before the Brexit referendum. Every indicator we have seen since then is of slowdown and regression.
Sorry for the dampener, but that’s how it is.
The family has announced the death of Matanya Ophee, a vibrant figure in the classical guitar world. He was 85.
Jerusalem born and active in contemporary music, he learned to fly in the Israel air force and put his skills to use as an airline pilot when he migrated to the US in 1965.
There he formed a chamber ensemble in New Hampshire and wrote combatively for guitar journals. In 1978, he founded the publishing company Editions Orphée, becoming a cornerstone of classical guitar activity.
