Lucas Meachem was rehearsing with his missus Irina (who’s also his pianist and vocal coach) when she sprang a surprise. It took him four takes to work it out.

 

The Madrid Government has approved a Royal Decree granting Spanish citizenship to the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

The official cause given is so that he can maintain ‘a special relationship with our country for family and cultural reasons. Dudamel is married to the Spanish actress Maria Valverde .

Unofficially, he needs to go places that will balk at the passport of failed state Venezuela.

 

 

The Italian Bernardo Bertolucci has died of cancer at 77.

He was wheelchair bound for the past decade.

His best known film is not particularly remembered for the title dance.

The composer was Gato Barbieri.

The Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien has been invalided out of the rest of the run of Bizet’s opera after having to be replaced more than once in mid-performance.

Debutant Alexander Birch Elliott takes over.

 

Although first-nighters went predictably wild, most newspaper critics dissented from Kaufmann’s latest depiction of the Moor as a dysfunctional man with a cipher wife (Anja Harteros).

Frei in the Neue Zurcher Zeitung writes that the outstanding strengths of the production were Gerald Finley as Iago and Kirill Petrenko in the pit.

Read here.

photo: Hosl 

See for yourselves. You can watch a live performance here on December 2 at 7pm