press release:

DALLAS, TX. April 19, 2018 – The Dallas Opera is pleased to announce that American baritone Craig Verm will perform the role of Don Giovanni in the three remaining performances of a critically acclaimed production from Lyric Opera of Chicago.  Verm was originally cast as Masetto in this star-studded international cast.

This revival… was originally scheduled to star Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecień.  Mr. Kwiecień was unable to sing the first three performances due to illness and has been granted permission to withdraw from the TDO production, at his request.

The music director has clarified his situation, following yesterday’s political ouster of the chief administrator.

From the desk of Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director, Teatro Regio Torino

After yesterday’s resignation of Walter Vergnano, Sovrintedente of Teatro Regio Torino, I would like to make clear that I did not resign from my position as Music Director of the Teatro Regio Torino. Under the present circumstances, I encourage the board of the Teatro Regio Torino and its president, Chiara Appendino, the mayor of Torino, to appoint a strong general manager who will be able to resolve the serious difficulties facing the theatre.

I must thank everyone at the Teatro Regio Torino from the stagehands to the technicians, workshop and make-up to the musicians and the chorus, for delivering the highest quality music and art since I became music director in 2007.

I will make my final decision about my future with the Teatro Regio Torino when it will be clear if the conditions offered by the board will allow my colleagues and me to produce the music and art at the level we offered to the world.

Gianandrea Noseda, Direttore Musicale del Teatro Regio Torino

A seguito delle dimissioni di Walter Vergnano – Sovrintendente del Teatro Regio Torino – annunciate ieri, vorrei chiarire che non mi sono dimesso dalla carica di Direttore Musicale del Teatro Regio di Torino. Apprezzate le circostanze, non posso che auspicare che il Consiglio di Indirizzo del teatro e il suo Presidente Chiara Appendino, Sindaco di Torino, nominino una figura di Sovrintendente forte, in grado di risolvere le serie difficoltà che il teatro deve affrontare.

Devo ringraziare tutto il personale del Teatro Regio Torino, dai macchinisti ai tecnici, dal personale di laboratorio ai truccatori, agli artisti dell’orchestra e del coro, che da quando ho assunto la Direzione Musicale nel 2007, hanno assicurato la più alta qualità musicale e artistica.

Prenderò una decisione sul mio futuro con il Teatro Regio Torino quando sarà chiaro se le condizioni che il Consiglio di Indirizzo presenterà consentiranno a me e ai miei colleghi di continuare a produrre la qualità artistica e musicale che abbiamo offerto al mondo fino a questo momento.

The London agency has hired Lorna Aizlewood, former senior executive of IMG Artists and EMI Records, as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel.

Since HP are not in the business of suing anyone, it’s reasonable to assume they are looking to the future. Lorna is a savvy operator.

Jasper Parrott, 73, continues as executive chairman.

We hear that Peter Konwitschny, one of the most respected German directors, has been sacked by Gothenburg Opera three days before the opening of his production of Boris Godunov.

The company’s CEO, Christina Björklund, said his behaviour had been unacceptable. ‘There were no grey areas,’ she told Swedish Radio. ‘I feel comfortable with this decision.’

The tipping point was an incident during the dress rehearsal on Tuesday night when Konwitschny began screaming at a trumpet player who was warming up in the pit. His outburst was witnessed by a childrens’ choir.

Konwitschy, 73, was removed from the rehearsal and fired the next day.

UPDATE: Konwitschny: I was confronted by the Inquisition.

Our diarist Anthea Kreston gets stopped in her tracks:

I was driving in my rental car, heading from the Oakland Airport for the final leg of our strenuous 2 week tour of the United States. Exhausted, but thankful that for these last 4 concerts, I would be based out of my sister’s house in Berkeley, driving myself to concerts in the Bay Area and Napa. I have been squeezing in as much practice time as possible – immediately after returning to Berlin, in addition to our new round of Quartet repertoire and recording sessions for Warner, I am playing a piano trio concert and a string trio concert.

Last season, our manager had called saying that the ElbPhilharmonie was looking for a string trio to play the Schoenberg String Trio for their opening week of concerts. Jason and I immediately thought of Volker, the original violist of the Artemis Quartet, and our friend since our student days. After the concert, the conductor Ingo Metzmacher came to find us back stage, and hired us on the spot for his adventurous concert series in Hannover, KünsteFestSpiel. His repertoire of choice – start with the Schoenberg (an intense 30 minute depiction of his heart attack), followed by the Rihm String Trio (für Drei). We immediately said yes, happy that our fun collaboration would have a future. Over beer, Volker said – you know this Rihm (a modernist German composer who is all the rage here) is basically never performed – it is an hour long and nearly impossible to play. Haha – that’s what they always say!

So here I was, in the rental car, blasting the Rihm String Trio, heading into the final leg of our tour, so happy to finally lay my head down in the same bed for multiple nights, and to have good food and company. About 40 minutes in, I was in the 5th movement, at the part where Volker sounds like he is hacking at a frozen carcass with a cleaver while I am strangling a cat in heat, and I heard something curious. A long, sustained elephant fart. A couple of things went through my mind – “Wow – these car speakers are incredible!”, “how the heck is that notated?”, and, finally, “the audience is going to adore this part!”. Driving on the second from left lane on a 6 lane highway, I noticed the wheel was shaking and the car pulling to the right. I turned off the speakers, and low and behold, the elephant was still at it. It wasn’t the Rihm after all, just a flat tire.

I pulled off as quickly as I could, to the shoulder of the exit ramp. By this time I was close to one of the tent villages around Oakland, and thought that the exit ramp would probably be the smarter choice for a regrouping. I checked the trunk for a spare and tools, and called my brother-in-law to tell him I would be late. Finding a piece of concrete in the brush, I steadied the footing of the jack (I was on a dirt shoulder), and dug in. Two trucks pulled over, each one with a friendly man, asking if I needed help. I said I thought I had this – I was a reasonably intelligent adult and I had changed my share of tires in the olden days. After inspecting my work, they both told me to carry on – lookin’ good!

And so, my “free day”, which had begun in Houston, teaching a wonderful group of students from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice, and catching up with old teachers James Dunham (Cleveland Quartet) and Norman Fischer, finally ended at 11:00 PM, in the glow of a warm Berkeley kitchen, glass of California wine in hand, catching up with family that I see all too little.

The final concert last night, in Napa, wrapped up our tour – all four of us are bone-tired, emotionally exhausted, and nursing along arms and fingers barely hanging on after so many nightly performances. None of us gave less than our whole selves – 4 rings of sweat glisten on the stage after our final encore of our 2018 US tour. I am waiting for a flight to Los Angeles now – heading down to teach a masterclass before stopping by to say hello to old friends in Oregon, and then back to Berlin, where my Humboldt Streich Trio eagerly awaits our exploration into the strange and marvelous world of Rihm.

The BBC Proms features one concert with Daniel Barenboim’s West-East Diwan Orchestra.

Aside from the Brahms violin concerto and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, it features a new work by Barenboim’s assistant, the British conductor David Robert Coleman, for soprano and orchestra. The title of the work is Looking for Palestine.

The BBC has strict rules for observing balance in the coverage of international conflicts.

Since the BBC Proms contains no work by an Israeli composer, or anything marking the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel, the Barenboim search for Palestine appears to be in contravention of the BBC Charter.

I feel sure there will be complaints.

The German record prize – given this week to a pair of Holocaust-joke rappers – has lost its first major sponsor.

Voelkel, an organic food company, says it does not approve of belittling genocide.

Two further sponsors – carmaker Skoda and beermaker Köstritzer – say they are considering their options.

For his final concerts as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on May 24-26, Jaap van Zweden has programmed the world premiere of a violin concerto by the American composer Jonathan Leshnoff.

The soloist will be the DSO concertmaster Alexander Kerr.

As the providers roll out another hot summer of same old music, quite a few of our readers are still busily commenting on a 2014 post listing the pieces that have outworn their welcome.

Check it out here.

1 He was a Jew.

2 Committed to his faith. He attended Fifth Avenue Synagogue on Yom Kippur.

3 He was an avowed Zionist who spent several months in Israel during the 1948 War of Independence.

4 He celebrated Israel’s 1967 victory with a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on Mount Scopus.

5 He never criticised the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

6 He was gay.

7 He married and had children.

8 As music director of the New York Philharmonic he did nothing to promote diversity.

9 He was a Democrat.

10 He was the best advocate for music ever seen on television.

If any of these attitudes and contradictions conflict with your strongly-held prejudices, you may have a problem.

Charles Castronovo has been called in to sing the male lead in all performances of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the Met, opening next week. He replaces Bryan Hymel who has not recovered from the illness that forced him out of Munich’s Vespri last month.

We wish him better.

Here’s the programme, announced this morning:

– Hector Berlioz’ Les Troyens (14 October 2018 – conductor: Alain Altinoglu; directed by: David McVicar; with: Brandon Jovanovich, Adam Plachetka, Peter Kellner, Jongmin Park, Paolo Fanale, Rachel Frenkel, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Joyce DiDonato, Margarita
Gritskova);

– Johannes Maria Staud’s und Durs Grünbein’s Die Weiden (The Willows, world première, Wiener Staatsoper commission; 8 December 2018 – conductor: Ingo Metzmacher; directed by: Andrea Moses; with Rachel Frenkel, Tomasz Konieczny, Thomas Ebenstein, Andrea Carroll, Herbert Lippert, Monika Bohinec, Alexandru Moisiuc, Zoryana Kushpler, Wolfgang Bankl, Sylvie Rohrer);

– Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (9 February 2019 – conductor: Evelino Pidò, directed by: Laurent Pelly; with: George Petean, Olga Peretyatko-Mariotti, Juan Diego Flórez, Jongmin Park);

– Manfred Trojahn’s Orest (first performance at the Wiener Staatsoper; 31 March 2019 – conductor: Michael Boder; directed by: Marco Arturo Marelli; with: Thomas Johannes Mayer, Thomas Ebenstein, Daniel Johansson, Audrey Luna, Laura Aikin, Evelyn Herlitzius);

– Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten (25 May 2019; conductor: Christian Thielemann; directed by: Vincent Huguet; with: Stephen Gould, Camilla Nylund, Evelyn Herlitzius, Wolfgang Koch, Nina Stemme);

– Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello (20 June 2019 – conductor: Myung-Whun Chung; directed by: Adrian Noble; with: Aleksandrs Antonenko, Olga Bezsmertna, Vladislav Sulimsky)