After adding 3 performances of the sol-dput Porgy and Bess, Peter Gelb told theMet audience at the last Akhnaten today that it will be back in two years.
It has taken 40 years for the Met to clink the Glass on its doorstep.
And 15 for Peter Gelb to wake up to a pair of American treasures.
The 2019 Kennedy Center Honors are to be shared between ‘Sesame Street,’ Linda Ronstadt, Sally Field, Earth, Wind & Fire and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Which of them, one wonders, should feel most honoured in such uneven company?
Happily, the event is elevated by the absence of President Trump.
The Times has an interview with an anonymous performer about the groping incident involving Vittorio Grigolo in Tokyo which resulted in the tenor’s dismissal by Covent Garden and the Met.
The performer was not a chorus singer, as originally reported, but a dancer.
Her colleague supplied some additional detail:
After he grabbed her fake belly during the curtain call, “her immediate physical response was to push him away”, she says. She says a (male) chorus member then intervened to reprimand Grigolo. “But instead of just turning around and carrying on bowing, he grabbed her again and shook the belly, saying, ‘I can touch her like this if I want to.’” She claims Grigolo then tried to square up to the chorus member off stage and said: “I’ll meet you outside.” “It was all very confrontational.”
…She describes [] a repeated pattern of unpleasant behaviour in Grigolo’s interaction with company members. “There had been another incident in rehearsal with a different female member of the cast, an actress feeling uncomfortable with a touch and a comment that was made,” she says. “It was that same sentiment of, ‘I can touch her however I want to.’ He knew that his place as a poster boy meant that it didn’t really matter what he did — until it did matter, because it was on stage.”
Full report here.
In a Commentary essay on child prodigies, the critic Terry Teachout lays blame for cultural degeneration on Yehudi and his parents:
Some contemporary prodigies, Kissin in particular, are indisputably major talents, while others, like the English soprano Charlotte Church, have no business performing in public. But none of them should ever have been subjected to the stresses of a modern, media-driven musical career at such young ages. Virtually every classical musician who has been allowed to perform professionally as a child (other than on isolated occasions) has experienced crippling psychological trauma as a result, and very few have been able to sustain major careers upon reaching adulthood.
In this respect, Menuhin has had an almost entirely negative influence on the culture of classical music, for he was the first child prodigy to live out his whole life as a media figure. He became the model for all who followed him, driving down the age at which one could qualify as a genuine prodigy. Without his phenomenal example, there might be no Sarah Changs—or Charlotte Churches. One can only hope they will escape the unhappy trajectory of his later career….
Read on here.
I find this a bit harsh. Those of us who knew the man might add a few nuances.
Ten cases to consider:
1 Arvid and Mariss Jansons
2 Neeme and Paavo Järvi
3 Kurt and Michael Sanderling
4 Erich and Carlos Kleiber
5 Arman and Philippe Jordan
6 Marcello and Lorenzo Viotti
7 Michail and Vladimir Jurowski
8 Leopold and Walter Damrosch
9 Georg-Alexander and Marc Albrecht
10 Kurt and Ken-David Masur
