The former LSO leader John Georgiadis, who recently published his memoirs, has undergone surgery in London for  brain tumour.

We wish him a speedy recovery.

Message from Irene Enzlin, cellist of the Delta Piano Trio:

When travelling to the West Cork chamber music festival on Friday I arrived at Zurich airport to find that KLM had cancelled my ticket without telling me. It turns out what had happened is that after reserving on the phone, calling back to make sure the cello was accepted, they sent me a payment link that was just for me, not for the cello. When the system realised, they just cancelled the reservation.

Seeing as anyway you can’t check in online with a cello I turned up with an e ticket that didn’t exist any more. KLM refused to help me (and haven’t reimbursed me) and left me to book new last minute flights. I posted about this on Facebook and another cellist saw it and realised that the same had happened to her for a flight this morning.

It means it probably is a common problem and we’re trying to find more cellists to complain together. I ended up having to drive in the middle of the night to Lyon to catch a reasonably priced flight to Dublin and from there a connecting flight to Kerry to arrive just in time for the concert. I hope you can help us find more cellists.

 

Débora Waldman has been named music director of the Avignon-Provence regional orchestra starting next year.

Débora, who is from Sao Paolo, Brazil, grew up on an Israeli kibbutz, studied in Buenos Aires and Paris and served as assistant to the late Kurt Masur.

The climate protesters will rally at Covent Garden at 6pm, targeting the arrival of audience members to an ROH performance of Carmen, which is sponsored by the oil company BP.

The protest is organised by a sub-group known as Culture Declares Emergency.

More disruption details here.

The Association of Polish Composers reports the death in Salzburg yesterday of Boguslaw Schaeffer, the senior composer of his generation, after Penderecki. Both were part of the Cracow Group of composers that dragged Polish music into modernism in the mid-1950s. Schaeffer wrote his PhD thesis on the music of Witold Lutoslawski.

He was professor in Cracow from 1963 and in Salzburg from the early 1980s.

As a composer, he remained a purist, shunning the populism pursued by many of his contemporaries.

Seatlle Opera is about to stage Verdi’s Rigoletto as a contemporary political parable.

From the press release:

For years, Lindy Hume, stage director of Seattle Opera’s August production of Rigoletto, has been frustrated by the way opera celebrates misogyny through its “bad boy” characters… ‘In 2019, if opera aspires to be a future-focused art form, then it must evolve and be responsive to a changing society… This history of telling stories about women being raped, murdered, and abused in opera is right there in front of us, either to explore, or to ignore.’

Hume says, Rigoletto ‘is not explicitly Trump’s America, or Berlusconi’s Italy, but a modern, highly recognizable version of the dystopian, brutal, corrupt society Victor Hugo and Verdi imagined. As a feminist and a fan of Verdi’s wonderful observation of human behavior, how could I resist bringing these worlds together in an imagined scenario where the excesses of obscene wealth, the corruption of high political power, and the moral void of the upper class, all vibrate with an undercurrent of fear, violence, misogyny, and criminality? This is the world of Verdi’s Rigoletto, and our own.’

Message from the BSO’s former music director:

I have heard of your recent challenges and am following from afar your firm resistance to board and management efforts to reduce the artistic quality of the Orchestra by reducing the number of weeks of full-time employment. I want to ensure you of my support for you and all that you are working to achieve to preserve and perpetuate the high artistic standards of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. 

The ludicrous saga of Bonn’s Beethovenhalle – which I first reported on Bloomberg 14 years ago – shows no sign of reaching any kind of rational resolution.

The latest estimate is that the renovation of the inadequate 1959 hall – a political compromise – is going to cost €166.2 million. That puts it more than 100 million Euros over budget.

And – wait for it – the hall won’t be finished until 2022, two years after the Beethoven Year, marking his 250th birthday.

Whatever happened to German efficiency?

Famous last words.

Barry Kosky’s regime goes from strength to strength.

The company sold  225,000 tickets for 239 performances, toppong 90 percen season capacity for the first time.

We hear there has been a clear-the-air meeting between the opera orchestra and the opera manager Marc Minkowski.

The mayor has come out in support of Minkowski, as have a raft of singers who include Laurent Alvaro, Benjamin Bernheim, Natalie Dessay, Julie Fuchs, Laurent Naouri, Camille Thomas and sign-everything Rolando Villazon.

But the orchestra is still unhappy. Minkowski has much to do before he wins them round.

Here’s the statement sent to us by his supporters:

Nous souhaiterions aujourd’hui, musiciens et chanteurs lyriques, plus ou moins jeunes, français et étrangers, apporter notre soutien à Marc Minkowski. Évidemment, nous ne voulons absolument pas remettre en cause l’Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, qui est un grand orchestre composé de musiciens talentueux et reconnus et le but de cette tribune n’est pas de juger ou de prendre parti. Nous ne connaissons pas tous les détails et nous n’avons pas le vécu de l’orchestre. En revanche nous avons un vécu différent et nous souhaitons ici apporter notre témoignage commun, sans la moindre pression quelconque. Si l’Opéra de Bordeaux a un tel rayonnement, c’est pour la qualité de sa programmation, de ses concerts, de ses ballets et de ses productions lyriques. A chaque production avec Marc Minkowski, il règne un climat hors du commun en répétitions et en représentations. Ce climat, cette atmosphère, c’est le bonheur de faire de la musique ensemble, de partager, de s’écouter, de créer, et même de developper un vocabulaire commun. Marc Minkowski nous porte, nous donne confiance, et nous tire vers le haut. Ce rare état d’esprit nous incite à toujours nous renouveler, à aller toujours plus loin dans nos interpretations et à prendre des risques. Et n’est-ce pas ce qui donne des frissons à l’Opéra ? Quand on sent que l’interprète tente d’aller le plus loin possible dans l’émotion, dans la variété des couleurs, et qu’il est sur un fil tel un funambule ? Ce fil, Marc Minkowski nous aide à le construire avec sérénité et une grande bienveillance. Pendant les représentations, il est tellement plus facile de se sentir calme et ancré, caractéristiques essentielles pour un chanteur ou un musicien, lorsqu’on a un chef en face qui respire avec nous, nous écoute, nous regarde, s’adapte à notre forme du moment, et même parfois rit ou pleure avec nous…
Par ailleurs, Marc Minkowski n’hésite pas à prendre des risques, à faire confiance et oeuvre intensément pour le chant français. A combien d’entre nous a t-il fait faire nos débuts dans des rôles fondateurs de notre repertoire ou dans de grands théâtres internationaux !
Enfin, il est inutile de rappeler l’excellence des enregistrements de Marc Minkowski, considérés comme de vraies références… Peut-on donc sérieusement et objectivement remettre en question ses qualités de chef et de musicien ?
Bien sûr, avoir un directeur général également chef d’orchestre peut cristalliser des tensions, c’est presque inévitable mais la nouvelle saison commençant bientôt, ne serait-ce pas l’occasion de prendre un nouveau départ et de nous rappeler pourquoi nous avons choisi de faire ce métier: Ce grand privilège de servir ENSEMBLE la Musique et d’apporter de profondes émotions à un public, toujours si présent et fidèle à Bordeaux !

Singers and musicians who have already accepted to co-sign this tribune :
Laurent Alvaro – Julien Behr – Stanislas de Barbeyrac – Benjamin Bernheim – Jean-Vincent Blot – David Bottero – Marie-Andrée Bouchard Lesieur – Adriana Bignagni – Damien Bigourdan – Ambroisine Bré – Sylvie Brunet – Gérard Cadet – Peter de Caluwe – Jean-Claude Casadessus – Adèle Charvet – Franck Chevalier – Valerio Contaldo – Nicolas Courjal – Thibault de Damas – Romain Dayez -Mireille Delunsch – Harmonie Deschamps – Olivia Doray – Alain Duault – Jérôme Ducros – Alexandre Duhamel – Nathalie Dessay – Amina Edris – Philippe Estèphe – Aude Extremo – Aubert Fenoy – Sydney Fierro – Tidou Fischer – Antoine Foulon – Julie Fuchs – Léa Frouté – Ferrouze Gadery – Daniel Gàlvez-Vallejo – Isabelle Garcisanz – Paul Gaugler – Anne-Catherine Gillet – Robert Gleadow – Isabelle Guillaud – Thierry Grégoire – Enguerrand de Hys – Vincent Huguet – Eric Huchet – Daniel Izzo – Caroline Jestaedt – Marie-Thérèse Keller – Ana Maria Labin – Marion Lebègue – Aurelia Legay – Lionel Lhote – Jean-Marc Luisada – Marie-Laure Machado – Constance Malta-Bey – Michel Margheriti – Anick Massis – Marjorie Muray-Motte – Laurent Naouri – Lisandro Nesis – Antoine Palloc – François Pardailhé – Pene Pati – Jérôme Pernoo – Bruno Philippe – Olivier Py – Stéphane Rougier – Bernard Richter – Mélodie Ruvio – Chiara Skerath – Blandine Staskewicz – Florian Sempey – Camille Thomas – Yann Toussaint – Christian Treguier – Jérôme Varnier – Mathias Vidal – Rolando Villazon – Malcolm Walker

The German orchestra manager Jan Nast is to be the new boss of the Vienna Symphoy Orchestra, starting October.

Nast, 54, is presently at the Dresden Staatskapelle.