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Welsh National Opera is delighted to announce Tianyi Lu as the first Female Conductor in Residence.

Described by WNO Conductor Laureate Carlo Rizzi as having ‘great musicality with a natural charisma on the podium’, Tianyi Lu is the first recipient of this residency, launched by WNO to help re-address the gender balance across the industry.  The scheme was developed following WNO’s ‘Where Are All the Women’ symposium in 2018 during which a panel of women and delegates shared experiences on challenges facing women in the classical music industry.

Does this mean WNO will permanently keep open a conducting post for a woman? It looks like the same sort of gesture signalling that is going on at the BBC.

Once the most sought-after solo violinist, Vengerov signed on today (pictured) as a professor at the Salzburg Mozarteum University. The post, it is stipulated, is being financed externally.

More here.

La Scala today confirmed casting for its season opener on December 7.

Anna Netrebko will sing Tosca, opposite Franceso Melli as Cavaradossi and Luca Salsi as Scarpia.

It is a new production by Davide Livermore. There is, unusually these days, no role for Netrebko’s husband Yusif Eyvazov.

Almost a week after the AP allegations of sexual harrassment against Placido Domingo, major European opera houses are signalling their solidarity and fellow-artists are posting friendship pics. Domingo himself has said nothing, but there are almost half-a-dozen support energetic sites that seem to be much better organised than the average opera fansite campaign.

Los Angeles Opera has refused to divulge the name of the law firm that has been appointed to investigate the Domingo claims. The Met says it will abide by LA’s conclusions.

The expectation in the opera world is that the report will probably result in Domingo’s retirement as head of LA Opera, but no wider consequences.

Domingo has long been known as a woman chaser. So why is the case looking like a damp squib?

Here’s why:

1 Eight of the nine allegations were anonymous. The ninth affirmed that her career was not harmed by resisting Domingo’s advances. On the contrary, he kept re-engaging her.

2 Domingo did not force himself on women. If they said No, he generally backed off – albeit, on some accounts, at the fifth or sixth No.

3 Crucially, no further accusers have come forward.

4 Domingo is genuinely popular among colleagues and has done much philanthropic work.

5 As one of the few opera names with mass recognition, he remains big at the box-office, even when he is just on the billboard for weakly waving a baton or supposedly directing a production. The opera world needs his name. That’s why it has rallied round.

The charges on which the leading Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, has been held under house arrest for more than two years  have been dismissed as an accounting error by a Moscow judge, according to Tass, the state news agency.

But this does not mean the director can be released. A further hearing has been scheduled for the end of this week. It is likely to be postponed because one of the attorneys is on holiday.

The Bregenz Festival, closing this week, will have sold all of its quarter-million tickets. Two downpours and forced the operas indoors and sent three-quarters of the audience home with a promise of refunds do not appear to have impacted the box-office.

The name that catches the eye in Oslo’s Queen Sonia International Competition finals is Meigui Zhang, a Chengdu-via-Shanghai soprano who is on the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Met.

Here are the last 6:
Stefan Astakhov,
Theodore Browne,
Sergey Kaydalov,
Adam Kutny,
Natalia Tanasii
and Meigui Zhang.