Mathieu Gallet, convicted last week of exercising favouritism in a previous job, has been summoned to a disciplinary hearing on January 29 by the broadcasting board.
Media pressure is building for his dismissal. Gallet, 41, head of Radio France and in charge of its several orchestras. He is a friend of President Macron’s.
Last week, Jennifer Rowley deputised as Tosca in David MacVicar’s production.
Last night, she was Leonore in Il Trovatore.
It’s the first time she sang either role at the Met.
Mark McLaren says she was not outshone by big stars. Read here.
photo: Karen Almond/Metropolitan Opera
The Ernst von Siemens foundation has announced its annual new music award.
The winner is Beat Furrer, 63, the Swiss-born Viennese composer.
Not exactly a bold choice.
The list of recent winners shows progressive befuddlement and sclerosis.
Once the foremost orchestra in Paris, the Colonne’s fame has subsided.
Its conductor resigned today after 13 years.
See if you can name him.
Last week’s accident, in which two chorus singers were injured by falling scenery, has prompted drastic measures at the Teatro Regio.
Read here.
Robert Carsen’s Salome, © Ramella and Giannese
Only in America.
Almost.
Fly 🦅 Fly!!! Way to go, @Eagles ! At the @philorch we have your back!! #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/SxEaA7louV
— Yannick Nézet-Séguin (@nezetseguin) January 22, 2018
Richard Morrison has published an interview in the Times this morning with Vladimir Jurowski, music director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (as well as orchestras in Moscow and Berlin, where he lives).
To give the thing a bit of zing, they slapped on a confrontational headline:
No part of this headline is true. Rattle is unbothered by Jurowski, who has been working in London for a decade. Jurowski says nothing in the piece to disturb or provoke any other conductor.
The LPO music director has no new ambitions for London and the South Bank, where he performs, is steadily losing audiences and relevance.
Morrison must know the headline is untrue. He did not write it. But the newspaper that published it is forever banging on about the evils of social media and fake news when its own editors knowingly promulgate falsehoods.
Headline on the top of the Times’s front page today:
Trust in social media hits record low amid fears over fake news
We’ve all been there.
Share and scare.
When we reported two months ago that Ramon Ortega, principal oboe of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, was leaving one of the best jobs in Europe to join the LA Phil, there was widespread bemusement.
The BRSO is a virtuosic ensemble with elysian working conditions. Ramon, along with other principals, is required to work no more than 20 weeks a year.
He can be on the ski slopes within half an hour of finishing rehearsal and on an Italian beach within an hour’s flight.
Why give all this up for the smogways of Hollywood? Especially when you’re only 29.
Maybe that’s why. ‘The orchestra is open to ideas that in Munich, for traditional reasons, are not carried out,’ he says.
Read what else Ramon has to say here.
The Manchester rock band has signed on to a one-off reunion in a concert with the Manchester Camerata.
One of the foremost Brit bands of the 1980s, the Smiths will be represented on stage by drummer Mike Joyce, bassist Andy Rourke and guitarist Craig Gannon. The vocalist Morrissey will not take part.
More here.
Robert deMaine, principal cello of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was down to play the difficult modernist concerto by Bernd Alois Zimmerman on Friday night, with Susana Mälkki conducting.
On Tuesday, he pulled out ‘for undisclosed personal reasons’.
The only other cellists who know this piece – reportedly, just three of them – are all in Europe and unable to reach the West Coast in time.
What to do?
The LA Phil went downtown and whistled. Three guys – LA Phil associate cellist Ben Hong, Calder Quartet cellist Eric Byers and Lyris Quartet cellist Timothy Loo – raised their hands. They split the five movements between them and the concert went ahead without a visible hitch.
Mark Swed writes: Only knowing Zimmermann’s concerto from recordings, I can’t say that the cellists were able to achieve the last word in interpretive nuance under such unreasonable conditions. But I can say that not only were all three utterly convincing, the addition of a third pas-de-trois element to the performance turned out to be a terrific theatrical idea. Moreover, the sense of camaraderie among the players, the orchestra, the dancers and Mälkki added an unexpected endearing aspect that is otherwise disturbingly lacking in Zimmermann’s music.
Read on here.
The NY Times critic Anthony Tommasini wrote that ‘vocal glitches and moments of tightness started creeping into Mr. Kaufmann’s singing. They continued throughout this sometimes frustrating performance.’
New York Classical Review said the German tenor was halfway through Die Schöne Müllerin before he was properly warmed up.
