The mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili who dropped out in the third act of Verdi’s Don Carlo at the Bastille this week has cancelled her participation the rest of the run.

Marina Prudenskaya will stand in.

Paris gets hit by more star cancellations than any other major opera house.

 

The RPO, whose greatest asset is its royal connection, has decided to ‘part company’ with Prince Andrew, the duke involved in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

The RPO expressed ‘gratitude to His Royal Highness for his support of the orchestra over the past 15 years’.

It inherited Prince Andrew after the death of its original patron, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

It has also lost is last music director, Charles Dutoit, to sex charges.

The RPO is starting to look like an unlucky orchestra.

 

photo: PA

News has been released of the death of Sir Stephen Cleobury, director of the choir at King’s College Cambridge for almost 40 years. Friends say he had been seriously ill for some time.

Fittingly, Stephen died on Saint Cecilia’s Day, in the city of York.

He was renowned the world over as conductor of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols which is broadcast on the BBC on Christmas Eve. He retired from his Cambirdge duties just six weeks ago.

In March 2018, he suffered serious head injuries after his bicycle was in a collision in Cambridge.

Tributes here.

UPDATE: Death of Westminster Cathedral Master of Music, 83

Forthcoming release from Oxford University Press:

Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (9780190458034)
Gregory Barz and William Cheng

The first large-scale effort to queer musical fieldwork and expose new horizons of ethnomusicological scholarship, Queering the Field addresses ethnomusicology’s normalized approaches to musical ethnography and investigates the sexual identities and modes of identification at play in the field.

Some more sales points?
– Documents queer voices of authors, musicians, and field colleagues in new ways
– Highlights the voices of younger scholars in ethnomusicology
– Presents analyses of queered musical performances that serve as cornerstones for further research
– Serves as launching pad for further monographic-length ethnographic studies in ethnomusicology

Steven Honigberg thinks so.

This arrangement might just catch on.