San Francisco Opera stated today that the countertenor has been removed from the role of Medoro in next summer’s production of Handel’s Orlando.
It said: ‘The decision to part ways with Mr. Daniels, for business and professional reasons, was reached after considerable deliberation given the serious allegations of sexual assault, an on-going police investigation and a lawsuit filed against the American opera singer. While these situations remain under investigation, San Francisco Opera is unable to present the artist on the War Memorial Opera House stage.’
Daniels has been accused of rape by two men, accusations that he has denied. This s his first role cancellation since the issues were made public.
The term ‘business and professional reasons’ suggests that SFO believed his presence would not play well at the box office.
In January, Daniels wrote: ‘I am extremely excited to announce another Händel role debut in the summer of 2019. I will be singing the role of Medoro in Händel’s ORLANDO with the San Francisco Opera. I am so grateful for my long relationship with the SFO and excited to tackle, yet another, amazing role.’
UPDATE: Daniels’s accuser Samuel Schultz writes: ‘I am deeply grateful for San Francisco Opera’s maintenance of their institutional reputation by placing value in the human body and mind over that of someone who abuses power in abhorrent and vile ways.’
Jane H. Kesson was an annual subscriber and regular attender at Philadelphia Orchestra concerts.
She taught junior high school, lived with her parents and never married. Ms Kesson died last year.
Today, the Philadelphia Orchestra came into $4.7 million from her will.
The worrying thing is that $4.5 million of her money is being spent on paying off the deficit of the last two years.
Surely they could do better than that? There must be a worthier way of commemorating this generous lady than just paying off past mistakes and old debts. It doesn’t ring right.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in hospital after she fell and fractured three ribs at her office in the Supreme Court.
We send her warm recovery wishes.
A devout operagoer, she has officiated at several musical marriages.
Many people of French descent are profoundly shocked at President Macron’s decision to honour Marshal Pétain, who sent so many French citizens to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.
On November 11, the European Union Youth Orchestra with their chief conductor Vasily Petrenko will mark the centenary of the end of World War 1 with a performance at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe.
The event has been organised by Emmanuel Macron.
We urge the conductor and members of the orchestra to show solidarity with the victims of Marshal Pétain by turning their backs on the collabrationist President Macron. Just for a minute – a gesture of solidarity with the dead French citizens he has shamed.
A bas, Macron!
No sooner did he conduct the Elektra revival at La Scala than Christoph von Dohnanyi, 89, pulled out of the second performance yesterday.
He was replaced at a few hours’ notice by Markus Stenz, who is presently rehearsing the Kurtag world premiere, Fin de partie.
The orchestra gave him a standing ovation, not a common occurrence at La Scala.
The mayor of Nice has announced the death of Francis Lai, who made his breakthrough in 1966 as composer of the Claude Lelouch film A Man and a Woman.
He was 86.
Lai won an Oscar for Love Story in 1970.
He also wrote the theme music for the BBC’s Panorama programme.
The Norwegians have a habit of publishing every citizen’s annual income and tax bill.
In the latest list it turns out that the distinguished violinist Arve Tellefsen had the highest tax bill in the whole of the entertainment sector.
Arve, 81, has been obliged to pay 21,211,550 Norwegian krone ($2.55 million) on taxable net worth of 90,774,551 NOK, which is $10.9 million.
Where did Arve make all his money?
He sold his violin, bought in 1970 for a million krone, to a very shy German investor.
Tellefsen, a widely recorded artist, is founder of the Oslo Chamber Music Festival.
In February 1984 he saved the violin from a watery death:
A violinist on the Scandinavian airliner that plunged off a Kennedy Airport runway ignored pleas from fellow passengers to use his $300,000 violin as a paddle for their inflatable life raft. Instead, Arve Tellefsen, 47, energetically helped with both hands to paddle the rubber raft to shore in Thurston Basin, a marshy creek off the end of the runway. “It was in this thing that they wanted me to use it as a paddle,” Tellefsen said Wednesday. (UPI)
A horror story from Texas.
Jordan Ali Halane, a Fine Arts teacher and a piano and voice coach at Wessendorff Middle School, in Rosenberg, was found unconscious in an empty classroom during a school break.
He died later in hospital.
The school principal told parents in a letter: ‘Unfortunately, we believe it was the teacher’s intent to harm himself.’
No details have been given of cause of death.
Halane, who was 32, was also vocal music director at Lamar CISD
He was coming up for his second wedding anniversary.
Message from the Canadian-Austrian artist Michael Schade:
Yesterday, I was hurled head first INTO the orchestra Pit!!!!
It all happened so fast during our piano dress of our charming and wonderful Opera of „ Die Reise des kleinen Prinzen“, a gift to myself in memoriam of my brother with the Vienna Boys Choir, as a part of the stage right ladder and scaffolding collapsed (we were trying out a new design, as I enter through the house) just over the pit during my entrance!
All I remember, is feeling this overwhelming knowledge that something serious was about to happen, and that I was “going down”- and that I needed to turn in mid air, to avoid hitting my head and neck directly of the piano well below, which I remember was approaching at the speed of light! I must have succeeded, as I “bounced off” the side of the piano above the left side of the keyboard, vaulted back in a backwards somersault, and landed backwards on my right shoulder and rolled onto my back! I was winded, and somehow broke a left thumb nail which was bloody , and a right hand nail , and as I hit the ground getting a slight bump in the head – the poor lovely stage hand man really had his bell rung with falling scaffolding as he was “securing” the newly designed stage entry! I have bruised my chest and neck, and right hand ( which is slightly alarmingly swollen just now and just sore, so no Chopin Etudes for me tomorrow) but the point is, I am fine 🙏 , thanks to my guardian angel, and all the good help at the theatre!!
It could have been way, way, waaaay, worse and turning in mid air made me be able to roll off the piano rather than, well, heading face first into it!!!! All continued just fine and then well into the night, with our following stage and orchestra rehearsal!
I want to thank all at the MuTH (concert hall of the Vienna Boys Choir) for they were very caring and insisting on getting doctors ( and should I need any more help, I shall ask, promise!).
Conclusion:
I just can’t believe it happened – I saw Nikolaus Harnoncourt at over 80 fall into the pit in Baden Baden while conducting our dress rehearsal of Zaide a few years back, then turn like a cat in mid air, land, roll, get up and continue rehearsal – but I NEVER thought I would join THAT club along with him, Ponelle, and Bjørling and a few more I am sure….
Opera is a dangerous sport , be careful out there kids and pros – Danke Schutzengel!
John Berry, ousted head of English National Opera has formed a new commercial opera and musical theatre venture with serious backers.
That’s bad enough news for ENO.
But John has also hired as his production director the scintillating Terri-Jayne Griffin, whose resignation from ENO caused confidence to sink at every level of the Coliseum. The Berry-Griffin bandwaggon is up and running.
The new venture will announce its first shows later this month (and we hear there are a couple of crackers).
Press release below.
SCENARIO TWO: FORMER ENO ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JOHN BERRY CBE LAUNCHES NEW COMMERCIAL THEATRE VENTURE
• SCENARIO TWO LTD created with Anthony Lilley OBE
• Supported by The Night Manager Producer, Stephen Garrett & former UMG Chairman Max Hole
• Terri-Jayne Griffin joins as Producing Director
• Details of first production to be announced this month [November 2018]
John Berry CBE is proud today to announce Scenario Two, a brand-new commercial theatre venture created with fellow creative industries heavyweight Anthony Lilley OBE, with support from Stephen Garrett and Max Hole CBE.
Scenario Two is a new company focused on commercial theatrical production in London, the rest of the UK and Internationally. It is based on Berry’s critically-acclaimed ENO model of bringing together the very best talent from the world of opera and musical theatre with top performers and creatives from other industries such as film, television and theatre. The company plans to create exciting new productions of classic musicals, develop new commissionsand thereby to attract both existing theatre-goers and newaudiences in the West End and major theatres around the world.
John Berry is best known for nearly a decade as Artistic Director of the ENO between 2005-2015, where his award-winning artistic programming included engaging Terry Gilliam to direct The Damnation of Faust and Benvenuto Cellini,, Mike Leigh to direct The Pirates of Penzance, and the creation of a new commercial musicals model which began with the sell out production of Sweeney Todd, with Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel. Since leaving the ENO, Berry has gone on to found Opera Ventures, a new charity which commissions innovative productions of contemporary opera with opera houses and festivals globally. The company’s first major production was an acclaimed collaboration with Scottish Opera and the Edinburgh International Festival of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek which transfers to New York in December 2018. Berry is Advisor to international opera houses in Moscow (Bolshoi) and Vienna.
He has co-founded Scenario Two with Anthony Lilley OBE, the producer and creative industries expert who met John during his time as a trustee of ENO. As CEO of Magic Lantern Productions, Anthony has won BAFTA, RTS and Peabody Awards by combining emerging digital technology with traditional creative media. He has worked with global media brands including Top Gear and Doctor Who and since returning to the arts has worked with Ai Wei Wei, The Space, Northern Ballet, Donmar Warehouse, Google Cultural Institute and many others. He has held non-executive roles at OfCOM and the Gambling Commission, is a current trustee of NESTA and holds a specially-created personal Professorship in Creative Industries at the Ulster University.
Joining as producing director is Terri-Jayne Griffin, one of the outstanding producers of her generation, who worked closely with Berry in the same role at ENO on numerous Olivier, Royal Philharmonic Society and Sky Arts Award-winning productions and international collaborations.
Supporters of the company include Stephen Garrett, producer of the recently lauded Night Manager, executive producer of such feature films as David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, and creator of such shows as Spooks, Hustle and Life on Mars through his company Kudos, and Max Hole CBE the former chairman of Universal Music Group International, who is widely credited with the company’s resurgence in the world of classical music via such artists as Daniel Barenboim and Milos Karadaglic, labels such as Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Classics, and live events such as the Bristol Proms.
Details of the company’s first production will be announced later this month.
John Berry said:
“The theatrical landscape in London is thrilling at the moment with many commercial and subsidized producers delivering breathtaking work. This new direction is therefore an exciting personal challenge for me and I’m enjoying the balance of commercial theatre and opera in my life.”
Anthony Lilley said:
“I’m delighted to be co-founding Scenario Two with Johnand, in doing so, returning to my first love; theatre, and, musicals. The team at Scenario Two and the artistic collaborators we are lining up are world leaders in their fields and I can’t wait to announce our first productions.”
