The Italian Government has ordered the closure of all opera houses until April 3.

Schools and universities face a two-week closure.

The consequence for opera is that new productions cannot go into rehearsal and the rest of the season will be severely disrupted. There could be bankruptcies among smaller companies.

All other social and economic factors aside, this is the worst opera crisis in Italy in living memory.

 

The Baltimore Symphony has rolled out its next season, Marin Alsop’s last as music director.

Apart from a co-produced Fidelio and Mahler’s 2nd symphony, it looks a post-lockout economy season with few top-price soloists except Hahn.

Here’s the rundown:

Maestra Alsop has planned a season that highlights some of her greatest musical passions.

Renowned violinist Hilary Hahn joins Marin Alsop and the Orchestra in Brahms’ Violin Concerto for the Season Opening Gala concert in September. Alsop and the BSO continue their celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday as she leads the Orchestra, chorus and soloists in Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio. In a production re-imagined for today’s society by Heartbeat Opera, the opera’s Prisoner’s Chorus will be sung on video by current prison inmates in an adaptation that has been called “imaginative, vital and heartbreaking,” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross. A Beethoven Birthday Bash concludes the celebration as conductor Anna Rakitina leads Beethoven’s popular Symphony No. 5, as well as Beethoven’s popular Fourth Piano Concerto with pianist Jeremy Denk.

Other highlights of the BSO’s 2020-21 classical season include orchestral works that are particularly meaningful to Maestra Alsop, including Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Mozart’s Requiem, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells,” is presented in partnership with Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum as part of the International Poe Festival. The Rite of Spring, famous for riots after its premiere in Paris, is paired with Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, which includes seven scenes – each devoted to one of the seven deadly sins.

The BSO also continues its commitment to the performance of new music. Christopher Theofanidis’ Drum Circles features four percussion soloists of The Percussion Collective, and Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick Suite is drawn from Heggie’s original opera and inspired by Melville’s iconic novel. Other new works include Judit Varga’s JUMP! and Texu Kim’s Spin-Flip. The 2020-21 season closes with a world premiere by Angélica Castelló, co-commissioned by the BSO and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

A number of BSO musicians are featured throughout the 2020-21 season as soloists, including Katherine Needleman, Harrison Miller, Audrey Wright and Lachezar Kostov in Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante in B-flat Major; YaoGuang Zhai in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto; and Jonathan Carney and Dariusz Skoraczewski in Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Cello.

Guest Artists: A number of the world’s top soloists join the Orchestra for the 2020-21 season including violinists Hilary Hahn, Ning Feng and Augustin Hadelich; pianists André Watts, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yefim Bronfman, Lukáš Vondráček and Louis Lortie; and cellists Alban Gerhardt and Pablo Ferrández.

BSO Debuts: Several guest artists make their BSO debut in the 2020-21 season including cellist Pablo Ferrández, violinist Ning Feng, vocalist Yolanda Adams and conductor Eun Sun Kim.

The Glyndebourne Cup has reached the last six contestants. They are:

Siphokazi Molteno (Mezzo-soprano, South Africa),

Sungho Kim (Tenor, South Korea),

Alexandra Lowe (Soprano, UK),

 

Eric Ferring (Tenor, USA),

Meigui Zhang (Soprano, China)

and Edward Nelson (Baritone, USA).

Finals on Saturday.

Backlash is starting to grow for the lenient sentence on a Canadian music teacher who made early-pubescent girls practice topless and groped their breasts.

Claude Eric Trachy, of Chatham, Ontario, was convicted of assaulting 20 female pupils from 1971 for about two decades.

This week Trachy, 75, was sentenced to eight months in jail.

Report here.

 

Coronavirus advice from the Boston Camerata, now going viral on their site:

HOW TO WASH UP IN MUSIC
We are advised, on good authority, that frequent washing of the hands is an excellent precaution against the day’s virus, and that singing “Happy Birthday” twice (circa 20 seconds) while doing so will help you time the process correctly.

Lest you be deterred, however, by the thought of having to perform that sappy tune twice in a row, Boston Camerata Labs (TM) suggest a few other washtime melodies that might time out acceptably, while giving somewhat more musical pleasure to the process. Our lab-tested examples hereby follow, in music-historical chronological order.

Moniot d’Arras (13th century): Ce fu en mai, 21 seconds
J. Dowland (1563-1626): Come again, sweet love (only once through the second phrase) 25 seconds
Franz Schubert (1797 -1828): Das Wandern ist der Müller’s Lust (one strophe), first song from the “Schöne Müllerin”: 22 seconds
Anon. 19th century: O My Darling Clementine (twice through) 20 seconds
W.C. Handy (1873-1958): Saint Louis Blues, just the minor key phrase with the diamond ring bit: 20 seconds

Enjoy your melodies! “Keep it clean!” — Eleanor of Aquitaine, to her troubadour Bernard:

AskonasHolt has poached Tobias Feldmann for worldwide management from Opus 3’s Berlin office.

Feldmann has come up through the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and the 2012 International Joseph Joachim Competition.

 

 

The St Paul Chamber Orchestra parted company yesterday with Ruggero Allifranchini, its co-concertmaster.

Here’s what players were told.

Dear Members of the SPCO,

I’m writing to let you know that Ruggero Allifranchini has resigned from his position with the SPCO to pursue other endeavors.

Sincerely,
Jason

Jason Piehl General Manager

We’ve been given to understand that an issue arose with another member of the orchestra and the Italian was asked to leave.

 

 

Patricia Barretto, President and CEO of the Harris Theater since 2017, has died of breast cancer, aged 45.

Among the productions she booked were Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi 450, the US debut of English National Ballet in Akram Khan’s Giselle, Bangarra Dance Theatre Australia, and more. This week Gardiner returned with Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique for a week-long Beethoven Festival. In May the Theater will present the Chicago debut of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

Barretto, Mumbai born, was previously Executive Director of Toronto’s Opera Atelier.

She is survived by her husband, son, parents and brother.

Our thoughts are with her grieving family.

 

Following the discovery of two Coronavirus carriers in the company, all staff at La Scala Milan have been ordered to stay away from the premises and work from home.

A handful of senior managers have been exempted from this rule in order to deal with urgent on-site issues.

They are rattling around the huge house like raw peas in a sucepan.

Stay safe, amici.

UPDATE: The Italian Government is looking at shutting all schools and universities until mid-March. The country has recorded 79 deaths.

La Scala has confirmed to Slipped Disc that a young tenor, presently involved in two productions, has tested positive for Coronavirus.

The tenor, a graduate of the company’s Accademia, had a small role in Salome and was due to appear in Madina, the new ballet by composer Fabio Vacchi and choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti. It is understood that the singer is Chinese.

The theatre will be closed at least until March 11, a full 14 days after the infected singer last entered the premises.

A second case of Coronavirus has been discovered at the Accademia. The patient is a young French dancer, who has since returned to France.

Coronavirus: latest advice.

The Australian director is working in Frankfurt with a Canadian Salome, Ambur Braid.

The headline adjective is Barrie’s. Ambur calls her character ‘twisted’.

The conductor Joana Mallwitz says it has invaded her dreams.


photo © Monika Rittershaus / Opera Frankfurt

Slipped Disc has just topped two million monthly readers for the first time.

In the 29 days of February we had 1.87 million, itself a record. Add two days of March for a full 31-day month and the total reaches a staggering 2.033 million.

Some have suggested that the pianist Yuja Wang, who had an unfortunate experience in Canada, acts as the site’s main clickbait.

Not at all.

The month’s top stories were:
1 Angela Hewitt’s smashed piano

2 Coronavirus

3 Yuja Wang

4 Andrea Bocelli’s first cancellation

Thank you, everyone, for your attention and participation in the world’s #1 classical music and opera news site.