The young Chilean musician Paolo Bortolameolli will continue as assistant conductor of the LA Phil next season.

He will serve as cover conductor for Gustavo Dudamel and guest conductors throughout the orchestra’s subscription season and on tour. This will be Bortolameolli’s third season with the LA Phil.

The American tenor Michael Fabiano has signed a long-term exclusive deal with Pentatone.

He will launch next year with Verdi and Donizetti arias, conduted by Enrique Mazzola.

The US violinist, born July 24, 1918, made his debut aged ten in San Francisco in 1928 and was still out there playing 80 years later.

A Paganini specialist, he made some five hundred recordings.

Ruggiero, fondly remembered, died on August 6, 2012.

Anyone know what became of his 1734 ex-Huberman Guarnerius?

Message from Margarida Castro, doublebass with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra:

 

 

Prompt sod-off reply from Virgin Trains:

 

What a dismal service. Richard Branson made his first millions out of music.

Putin’s maestro will make his Bayreuth debut next summer conducting Tannhäuser, it was announced a few minutes ago.

Expect the assistant conductors to be overworked in his absence.

Stephen Gould will sing Tannhäuser, Lise Davidson is Elisabeth and Ekaterina Gubanova plays Venus. The director is Tobias Kratzer.

 

Graham Vick has inflamed the Italians, again, with an overtly political opera.

 

His production of Mozart’s Magic Flute in Mecarata shows a bulldozer about to flatten a migrants’ camp. Members of the chorus simulate drowning refugees. The production is described as ‘anti-racist’.

Sections of the audience booed on opening night and a Liga politician said: ‘This is a massacre damaging Mozart and the spectators.’

Read on here.

 

Michael Pastreich, who grew the Florida Orchestra from $8 million to $21m over 10 years, resigned yesterday as CEO.

Hours earlier, Susan Danis quit Florida Grand Opera.

Something’s going on down there.

 

This hot potato won’t go away. The Pulitzer has made the breakthrough. In a decade, there will be more hip-hop professors in US universities than classical teachers.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Despite the skepticism, many higher-education institutions today, including Harvard University and Cornell University, house large archives dedicated to the study of hip-hop. Anthologies and journals have been published, like the Journal of Hip-Hop Studies and the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap. Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for music for his album DAMN. The genre has thrived, and so has the research, Kubrin said.

Nitasha Tamar Sharma, an associate professor at Northwestern University, teaches a class and has published a book focusing on the racial and gender politics of hip-hop culture. The course traces the foundations of hip-hop, from its 1970s beginnings in the South Bronx, and explores its influence in politics, race relations, gender and sexuality issues, and other aspects of American culture.

Sharma said studying hip-hop benefits students because they are able to see the effects of the music as they unfold. Rap lyrics shape current events, she said, like a “soundtrack” to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and other modern movements. Hip-hop reaches students where they are, so they can learn more about the world around them, she said.

“All kinds of young Americans come to know themselves and understand the black experience through professors and teachers who are not in the academy, but who are rappers,” Sharma said…

 

The death has been reported of  Isabella Nawe, star of the  Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin from 1970 to the mid-1990s.

Born in Czestochowa, she was snapped up by Berlin after a 1967 debut as Gilda in Lodz.

Her major roles included Konstanze, Despina, Rosina, Norina, Nannetta, Adele, Sophie and Zerbinetta.

Away frm Berlin she sang in Brussels, San Francisco, Paris, Lisbon, Munich and Vienna (1974 Gilda at the Staatsoper).

Isabella Nawe died on July 18.

The main character has turned up for Bayreuth’s Lohengrin.

Facing the wrong way.

The Ravinia Festival paid tribute last night to one of the greatest American pianists on his 90th birthday.

He played – and nothing changed.

His former student Lori Kaufmann writes: ‘ There was more music tonight in his rests than in a two hour recital by any other pianist around today. He still has the best sound in the business, and he has a better understanding of rhythm than any musician.’

In a phone interview with Elijah Ho, Fleisher says: ‘Except for my sight, which is fast diminishing, I’m hale, hearty and ambulatory.’