Angela Gheorghiu: Vittorio my dear, your exuberance and your explosive character rare truly misjudged. You are a great artist and nothing else matters! Your debut was with me and until this year we have sung together all over the world with fulminant success! Always with a relationship of friendship and great respect. Artists always make jokes and play, and perhaps at one moment someone has not understood you. Sin! Worse for them and I’m sorry if anyone can hurt your career as a result of your exuberance. I hope they repent and they will leave you forever in Holy Peace to perform this splendid and very difficult job! You are a great and true artist and I love you so much!
Vittorio mio caro, la tua esuberanza e il tuo caratere esplosivo e veramente mal giudicato. Sei un grande artista e niente altro non conta! Il tuo debuto e stato con me e fino quest anno abbiamo cantato insieme in tutto il mondo con fulminanti successi! Sempre con una relazione di amicizia e grande rispetto. Gli artisti scherzano e giocano sempre, e forse a un momento qualcuno non ti ha capito. Peccato! Peggio per loro e mi dispiace se qualcununo ti possa fare del male per la carriera per la tua esuberanza. Spero che si pentano e ti lasceranno per sempre in Santa Pace per farti questo splendido e dificilissimo mestiere che e la lirica! Sei un Grande e vero artista e ti voglio tanto bene!
Sonya Yoncheva: More exuberant sincerity is needed to this world!
The head of a major European festival has written to British musicians, warning that they are unlikely to be invited again in the future.
The exact words:
A lot of museums in EU will not give any loans [to Britain] at the moment because everything is unclear. And a lot of colleagues stop inviting British orchestras and theatres.
The state of the union, end of 2019.
UPDATE: A leading UK music entrepreneur comments: ‘Unfortunately this corroborates what I’d heard [from promoters] when working abroad’.
Judith Anne Still, daughter of the neglected symphonist William Grant Still and custodian of his legacy, has written to US music directors seeking help in restoring his music.
Among other things she writes:
It is time for the racially defamatory opera, Porgy and Bess, to abdicate the stage. George Gershwin, said to be a friendly fellow, visited Harlem almost every night in the 1920s where he and other White composers stole the music, songs and dances of the prolific Afro-Americans and made millions from them.
The music of William Grant Still, W. C. Handy and James Johnson was broadly taken over by Gershwin and, after all the thefts, composers of Color were left with ‘plenty of nothing’.
It’s a timely point of view, coming as it does after Porgy’s sell-out success at the Met, but is it valid?
In my new book, Genius and Anxiety, I argue that Porgy’s music is more Jewish than Afro-American.
See what you think about this.
I found it oddly hypnotic.
Our pal Max Lima has been busy in the archives. You won’t want to miss this discovery.
Back in January 1996 when only a few geeks were online, molecular biologist Len Mullenger set up MusicWeb International.
Since then it has held steady as a seriously good resource for truly serious reviews – 52,122 of them as of this morning, all of them readable free without a paywall.
Len, now 76, has stepped back from the day-to-day editing but the site has kept up his high standards. The publishing of reviews is looked after by David Barker in New Zealand, while Jonathan Woolf in London sends out releases for review.
