An anonymous maven* on Facebook and Youtube has issue a video challenging the vocal expertise of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and accusing him of ruining young voices.
Much as we deplore shadows who attack famous people from behind a screen, some points here may be worth addressing.
* Maven is an ironic US-Yiddish term for someone who thinks he know everything.
A girl in Berlin who petitioned the courts for the right to join the all-boy Domchor today lost her case.
The judge ruled that it was the conductor’s artistic right to exclude girls.
But there will be a process of negotiation.
Vienna next?
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
… Each of four movements is introduced by a promising idea, which promptly gets lost in a mound of bombastic waffle. I have seldom heard a piece that is so utterly all-over-the-place, so directionless and devoid of purpose that the eye strays to the wristwatch (only 40 more minutes to go) and the ear prays for an armistice….
Read on here.
First reports from last night’s Simon Boccanegra in Salzburg suggest that the loudest cheers were for the conductor, Valery Gergiev.
He had flown back from his mother’s funeral in the Caucasus with not much time to spare.
Luca Salsi sang the Doge, with Marina Rebeka as Amelia and Rene Pape as Fiesco.
Gergiev has one more Tannhäuser to conduct at Bayreuth, where he was poorly received.
The Rotterdam Philharmonic has named Adam Hickox as its joint assistant conductor for the next two seasons. Adam will share duties with Corinna Niemeyer as deputies to music director Lahav Shani.
He has recently signed to the Intermusica agency, which used to look after the late Richard Hickox. Adam is his son.
The San Diego Symphony is about to get a new hall:
The San Diego Symphony announced today that construction will begin in September on its highly anticipated permanent bayside concert venue to be located in the Port of San Diego’s Embarcadero Marina Park South on the San Diego Bay with the first concerts scheduled for summer 2020. The new upgraded park and venue will feature a permanent, highly innovative, architecturally striking and acoustically superior outdoor stage.
Behind the stage is a British consortium called Soundforms, founded by the conductor Mark Stephenson. The stage it will build in San Diego is a scaled-up version of the one used at the London 2012 Olympic Park. It will accommodate up to 150 musicians and chorus.
Well done, Mark.
While his accusers remain anonymous and the AP journalist behind the story has gone silent, leading colleagues are coming out to support the beleaguered Domingo, under the #Metoo spotlight.
Mezzo-soprano Violeta Urmana: ‘I’ve been working with Maestro Placido Domingo for over 20 years. He’s a phenomenal artist, the kindest and most correct person.’
US soprano Ana Maria Martinez: ‘Always, and in particular in this day and age, women’s voices, all voices deserve and need to be heard and given the platform to express their truth. I have known Maestro Plácido Domingo and have worked with him for over 23 years. He has always been a gentleman and treated me with dignity and respect.’
Mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza (left): ‘No one has the right to judge anyone without knowning what has happened, least of all in public. I am very sorry for Placido because I love him and he is my friend.’
Mezzo-soprano Annalisa Stroppa: ‘I had the pleasure and honor of working with the great master Placido Domingo and i wish to express all my solidarity with him. I met a wonderful person: serious, kind, respectful, distinguished, brilliant and humble.’
Russian soprano Irina Lungu: ‘I met Placido Domingo in 2004 at the beginning of my career, winning one of the awards at the Operalia competition. In these past 15 years I have had the luck to work with him on several occasions. As a younger artist, I have always received from him nothing but support, kindness and inspiration for my career, lessons of professionalism, style and total dedication to our art. Domingo has always been for me a great example of courtesy, sensitivity and correctness.’
Former Teatro Real director Antonio Moral: ‘I have known Placido Domingo for more than 30 years and have had the great fortune of collaborating very closely with him during my five years as artistic director of the Teatro Real de Madrid, more than eight in Operalia and many others in the historic recording project of zarzuelas of the Cajamadrid Foundation and I must say that I do not believe the accusation of harassment of which he is being victim these days. I think that they want to knock down the incredible career of a unique singer in history and, since he does not retire of his own accord, they want to knock him off the stage in this way as unbelievable as demonstrable. And even more for some alleged events that occurred more than 30 years ago!’
Romanian soprano Marina Krilovici: ‘I’ve known Placido Domingo more than 40 years when we started our careers in Hamburg. I know his family very well. He has enormous respect and love for his wife Marta. Every performance with him was something very special for me. His voice, talent, musicality and generosity on stage was the same in life. A wonderful friend and person and a very very successful singer. I admire his rise to the top. He is a fantastic singer, conductor, general director and creator of a very important singing competition which built a lot of great careers. I support with all my heart the integrity of this great artist.’
Mexican tenor Javier Camarena: ‘Maestro Domingo: You know how much I appreciate and admire you and my eternal gratitude for your kindness and your always beautiful words regarding my work. I pray to God for the peace in your heart, may his arms embrace and protect your family in this moments of storm.
“Truth will make you free” (John 8-31)
I hope the truth I see in your soul, shines above all.
I’m with you.’
See also: Music world splits on Domingo
NPR has obtained the first interview with the only one of nine accusers of Placido Domingo who agreed to speak in her own name.
Here’s Patricia Wulf on Domingo’s alleged harrassment:
And did you suffer any professional consequences by rebuffing him over and over again?
No, I didn’t. I didn’t suffer anything careerwise. In fact, it was interesting: He and the company kept hiring me. And that was great — I sang in [The Magic] Flute, I sang in Fedora, I sang in Don Carlo. … In fact, in Fedora, I remember asking one of the other leads, “How do I stop this? How do I get him to stop bothering me?” And the woman said, “You just keep saying no. And he will eventually stop.”
And he did, in your case.
By Don Carlo, yes, he had slowed down considerably: It still happened, but not nearly as much. Plus, I was playing a boy and I didn’t look nearly as fetching as I did earlier [laughs].
You have talked to The Associated Press, to CBS, and now you’re talking to NPR. Why did you decide that now was the right time to come forward about something that happened almost two decades ago?
I teach voice. And if a student wants to pursue an opera career, I feel like it’s my obligation to let them know what can happen, and what is happening in this field. I hope that it can give a young woman the strength and the courage to just say no to them. You don’t have to give in to that. It’s not going to help your career. It’s not going to make you feel better about yourself. Feeling better about yourself will come when you have the strength to say no.
Read the full interview here.
UPDATE: Music world splits
From our volin diarist Anthea Kreston:
I am 90 minutes outside of Chengdu, China – smack dab in the middle of the country, in the ancient town of Jiezi. The drive from the densely populated city – from downtown, then through huge rings of skyscraper clusters (each one looking like a city in its own right – like one of the futuristic movies where a post-apocalyptic, worn-out metal city in all-grey springs out of a cluster of jungle), then slowly into smaller towns, strips of large manufacturing complexes, then to teeny mixed fields of rice and fruit trees crowding closely to the road, bordered by irregular lines of corn and small clusters of traditional housing.
We arrived at our hotel – a large, newly built complex with window treatments reminiscent of a Bavarian village – red flowers draping down from hundreds of rectangular window boxes. The entire hotel seems to be floating on water – large stone pools surround – metal sculptures and modern fountains, small bridges connecting outside eating areas and various gazebos with stone ashtrays and traditional games laid out on tables, with white-gloved staff offering drinks. Throughout the complex, speakers hidden in rocks create a blanket of quiet, soothing Pipa and Erhu music. At the entrance, on a multi-tiered AstroTurf covered platform, with large white umbrella and cordoned with wide red and bronze rope, a handsome military sentry with aviator glasses stands firm.
Our area is just a five minute walk from the bridge to the ancient city – the main square lined by Gingko trees which are over 1,000 years old, and a stone pagoda – it feels similar to Venice – no motorized vehicles past the bridge, and the narrow roads are lined on both sides by sunken stone streams. To cross to the small stores, you have to step on one of the large stone fish evenly spaced in the water. Everything from steamed buns, clay-pot chicken, to tea and spices – 10-foot tall racks of drying meat (including pig heads), men beating steaming piles of cooked rice in huge stone mortar-and-pestles, shirtless workers hanging fresh noodles on bamboo sticks, and a smattering of clothing stores and trinket shops. And like Venice, just take a turn off a main thoroughfare and you can find yourself completely lost within a moment.
We are still the only non-Asians in town (there are some faculty at the festival who are non-Asian – a German cello quartet and a handful of wind and brass players from the States). We are still being followed when we go to town – mostly sweetly, but on one occasion a man grabbed my youngest by the upper arm – the imprint of his fingers still visible hours later. People offer us local fruits and foods to try, and take photos and videos of the girls.
The area we are staying in, just outside the ancient town, is part of an enormous newly planned mountain/stream vacation area for the Sichuan region. An enormous (and so far empty) grouping of conference spaces are encased in vaulted, dark wooden slats, surrounded by organized bamboo forests, and the tiered structures are lined with stairs/arena-style seating. Cranes fill the air, and some rehearsals (I am playing Schindler’s List with the band – it’s huge – it must have 15 tubas) are held in buildings which are not even quite finished being built. The chairs for the band are still covered with plastic – rebar sticks up above the construction fences from hundreds of partially built complexes, and tape crossed new windows – the floors beneath already inhabited – drying laundry hanging out of window. Out of the wall of windows from the band rehearsal, I see an impossibly lush vista of mountainous rain-forest, although the freshly-churned earth directly in front of us is being turned by large yellow bulldozers. Many trees were felled within my sight even during my short rehearsal yesterday. The interiors of the buildings are beautifully done – but a quick peek to the right or left belie another story – corridors which have an old dented teapot on a hot plate, noodles being cooked by a person in weathered local clothing, rooms lined with many bunk-beds for the hotel workers, in nearly window-less basement rooms, and the haste with which the construction occurs understandably leads to doors which open the wrong way, floorboards already loose, and loose wiring behind the cupboard doors in the hotel room. This is an entire city being built from a forest – a city for the wealthy of Chengdu to have a second home mountain getaway. There is even an equestrian facility going up along the main river – it looks like a huge albino dragon landing – right next to the locals bathing and doing laundry in the muddy, fast-moving river.
The ensembles are gigantic – last night outside the town square, the orchestra played – it’s the largest orchestra I have ever seen – heavily amplified, accompanied by a light show, and an audience like a rock show. Vendors line the road, selling noodles or watermelon from the back of their motorcycles. It’s quite an experience. We are heading out now to search for an antique map to add to my collection at home – I noticed a calligraphy shop in town. Many concerts are still to come, with elaborate receptions and dinners and drinks with new friends, new tastes and sights.
