We hear from the National Symphony in Washington DC that four more players have joined the orchestra – violinists Marina Aikawa, Peiming Lin and Derek Powell and trombonist Kevin Carlson.
That makes 15 new hires by Gianandrea Noseda in just under two years, an unusually high influx for any orchestra, especially an American one.
We understand that some of the recruitments were to fill long-vacant seats.
With the last of 270,584 tickets sold, this summer’s Salzburg Festival clocked up 97% capacity, much the same as last season.
Revenues, at 31.2 million Euros, were up three percent.
Nice work, if you can afford the tickets.
The archetypal American in Paris, Nancy arrived from Cleveland via New York as a nightclub dancer in the 1950s. She began singing ye-ye when the action was slow.
In 1961 she opened her own club, Chez Nancy Holloway, starred in a film and released her first hit single, ‘Le Boogie du bébé’. Over a stream of releases, she became popular as an American chanteuse who sang American hits in badly accented French directly to a French audience.
She died yesterday in Paris, aged 86.
Alexander Steinbeis is stepping down after 13 years as managing director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
Steinbeis, 45, will leave a year from now, of his own volition. He is seeking, he says, ‘new challenges’
His music director Robin Ticciati says: ‘However upsetting this news is, I fully respect Alexander‘s decision to leave the DSO family after five joint years of extremely creative and mutually supportive collaboration. He was decisively involved in engaging me as the
orchestra’s music director. Together we have thus far implemented large-scale artistic projects like the ‘Brahms Perspectives’ festival in 2019, the stage production of Händel’s ‘Messiah’ in 2018, and the ‘Parallax’ project in the Kraftwerk Berlin in 2017. We will continue down this road in the coming months and, last but not least, we will jointly plan the next seasons. I’m looking forward to that!’
His CV is more diverse than that of most German orchestral bosses:
Born in Munich in 1974, Alexander Steinbeis grew up in Germany and the UK. After studying management and arts administration in London, Paris, Oxford and Berlin, he was engaged in 1999 by Seiji Ozawa as Assistant Artistic Administrator for artistic planning for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he worked until 2005. His responsibilities there included concert planning and dramaturgy for the orchestra’s concerts in Boston and at the Tanglewood Festival. During this time, he was also responsible for a series of musicological symposia in collaboration with Harvard University.
… and no Spanish writer condemns him.
The world has gone binary: you are either anti-Domingo or pro.
Writers in the land of the free live in fear of mob waves of mass opinion. Those in older societies are terrified to confront establishments. The case of Placido Domingo, named as a sex-pest by eight unnamed women, highlights the current conundrum.
Major US newspapers have published a Domingo takedown by the Associated Press without challenging its premises, or following up with a balanced analysis. The Met is being called upon to end his career. The company’s position – to wait for a legal report from LA Opera before making any decision – is tenuous and interesting. No writer in any US medium has highlighted its dilemma. Knowledgeable writers find themselves unwilling to go against the condemnatory grain.
In Spain, where Domingo is a national hero, an opposite view has been imposed: Domingo can do no wrong. Across Europe, his position is unharmed. The Berlin State Opera, headed by his friend Daniel Barenboim, has just confirmed his participation in the coming season. The Arena di Verona is celebrating his jubilee in its stadium. La Scala, Covent Garden and others are singing his praises.
So where is the informed and balanced view?
Let’s face some facts. Domingo is no hero. He has been pestering women for years. He has been vain, greedy and tiresome since his tenor voice faded. He keeps demanding baritone roles, while also conducting and directing operas for which he has no exceptional talent. In doing so he denies opportunities to others and clogs the channels of career development. He held on far too long at Washington National Opera and still clings to power at LA Opera. He has promoted members of his family. He mingles with corrupt sports officials and political dictators.
He’s 78. Hanging on does not improve his image for posterity. It’s time for him to go with grace.
That said, Domingo remains a major box-office asset, one of the few universally recognisable operatic names. He is congenial to colleagues and frequently kind. Many young artists have benefitted from his time and his advice. He has a considerable social conscience and spreads his wealth to good causes, while also splashing it on private jets and commensurate luxuries.
There are many sides to Placido Domingo and many human aspects to his present situation. They are not being exposed or discussed with the reason and the information that we have a right to expect from a free press.
UPDATE: A singular exception is this LA Times article by Mark Swed, striving to present an argument that is both informed and balanced.
Nico Fleury has been confirmed as principal horn of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
The Frenchman was formerly principal of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Up north, former Irish Chamber Orchestra principal Stephen Nicholls has been named Associate Principal Horn of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
The falling out between Christian Thielemann and the Salzburg Easter Festival chief Nikolaus Bachler is likely to cost his Dresden Staatskapelle its valuable slot.
The orchestra has issued a statement declaring its loyalty to the Salzburg Easter Festival, with a contract that runs to 2022. ‘As a reliable partner of the Salzburg Easter Festival, we look with great confidence and joy to the coming festival years,’ it said.
The festival rather dustily replied that its contract runs out next year and is anyway linked to Thielemann’s:
The declaration of the Staatskapelle Dresden GbR published today is factually inaccurate.
The orchestra master agreement ends after the present contract situation in 2020. To extend it, an extension of the framework agreement expiring in 2020 between the Free State of Saxony and the Salzburg Easter Festival is required. This in turn is linked to the chief conductor contract of Christian Thielemann. So there can be no question of an independent effectiveness of the orchestral contract.
Our violin diarist Anthea Kreston is about to say goodbye to Berlin:
“Life might be difficult for a while, but I would tough it out because living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.” – David Sedaris
I always wanted to live in another country for a stretch. And even more so when I had children – I was lucky that Jason thought the same. We had toyed with the idea of one of us getting an orchestra job for a couple of years in some gorgeous sea-side town in Spain or Italy, the children running in the water and the 4 of us enjoying long, rustic meals. And, I had always loved the Artemis Quartet. Ok – Berlin is a far cry from a house clinging to a cliff, fishermen hawking their catch on the piers. But it has all the exoticism and “foreignness“ a person could desire. It’s a German String Quartet in Berlin. And so, when I won the position, it was like two perfect worlds colliding. I didn’t think of it as a stretch, though – I went all-in. I didn’t leave a box of stuff in a friend‘s basement, or my dining room table in a storage space. We packed a suitcase each, sent a small amount of sentimental items (books, artwork), and made for ourselves a brand new life.
It changes you, permanently. Maybe that was what I was looking for, in some way. This time next week, we will be back in the USA, after a 4 year whirlwind experience. We jumped off the deep end, all together, and we are all better, stronger, more compassionate humans. Here are my take-always.
Family: We said goodbye to family and friends. Not the kind of goodbye, like, “see you next weekend”, or “hey – why don’t we have New Years at our house this year?“. Goodbye, like “let’s see how finances go – we will try to come see you next year, or in two years“, and “next time I see you my nephew will be 3 and I have never met him“, and, on several occasions, e-Mails such as “please give everyone at the memorial my best wishes“, or “I am so thankful the surgery went well“ were written. Those things cannot be undone. Those people cannot be seen taking their first steps or have their hands held quietly. The flip side is that I could never imagine being as close as I am with Jason now. My daughters‘ relationship to each other has a magical, magnetic intensity. Jason will never write the words “I just wish I hadn’t missed so much of their childhood“. I might write that, but I won’t, because what the three of them created together is something so close – I don’t even know what they are talking about half the time. And it’s good. Really good. And those long-distant relationships? Sure, some faded, but the ones that stayed became stronger, deeper and more important.
Cultivation of Endless Patience: My god. The paperwork here. Just to give you a taste. For my German taxes there is a per diem which splits each day you are away into three 8-hour chunks. If you don’t have the paper ticket for the s-Bahn, you can’t deduct your travel. It literally takes me 40 hours to get it done every year. And every facet of life seems the same. The work visas, the drivers license, the registration with the police and social security, the lines and waiting rooms with rows of white plastic chairs and small, high windows. But it all ends up happening, somehow. And I have become more patient. And I let things wash over me. And I am more creative with solutions. The funny thing is – just yesterday our long-term visas came through. After nearly 4 years and over 10 denials. Go figure.
Language/Culture: Its been increasingly more fun to hack my way through a German conversation. I was never fearful, but recently, I have found a lightness. My colleague once berated me slightly in rehearsal “you know, you can’t just turn a noun into a verb because you think it’s a good idea! There are rules!“. My kids are good at German. And they are also kindof German. Well – they aren’t exactly American. They don’t know what a turtleneck is. I think Jason is amazing. I hear him in the studio, teaching cello lessons in German, laughing and going faster and faster every week. We will keep it up. We have fallen in love with some parts of German cuisine – perfecting our Pretzel recipe and already planning on trips back in the summers. My secret away-from-home guilt meal is Spätzle mit Käse and a huge beer. With those crispy onion bits on top. The culture – honestly, it still confounds me regularly, but so does American culture.
Loneliness/Guilt: The guilt of taking Jason away from his family, his career, his ocean and mountains, his friends and his beer. The loneliness that he experienced – the isolation in every way. He became a single father in a foreign country with 2 week‘s notice. My guilty feelings can’t go away because those things are irreplaceable. My loneliness on tours, my struggles, which I didn’t want to put on Jason’s already full plate. My guilt at ever even having a personally rough time, after pulling my family so far away. Writing a weekly diary became a foundation of my health – it kept me grounded and gave me the tools to process my life and decisions.
Definition of Home: It went from a place to a feeling. Home is now within us – it is solid and forever.
Core Principles Developed: The big things in life are more clear and defined than they ever could have become if we hadn’t taken this leap. Passing these principles on to the children – fearlessness, desire for adventure, generosity, embracing the new, feeding your passions, never giving up – not searching for success, but for knowledge and fulfillment.
And so – we are forever changed, and for the better on all fronts. We, all four of us, now know that there are no boundaries to life – to courage and a willingness to learn and grow. Go out there, and grab life!
image from Babylon-Berlin
We reported last month on the completion of a new opera house at the Shanghai Conservatoire.
The city is now having another one built in the Expo Houtan district.
Snøhetta of Oslo are the designers. Here are some first pics.
