Don McLean, an underrated original artist.

Josh Groban: I felt it needed to be redone.

Really?

Remember the jokes about ‘conductor’s voice?’ Forget them.

This is the ROH music director’s take on Pagliacci.

The Rossini Opera Festival has announced it will go ahead at Pesaro from August 8 to August 20.

The orchestra will be placed in the stalls of the Teatro Rossini and the audience will be sat in boxes. Dmitry Korchak will conduct a new production of La cambiale di matrimonio, coproduced with the Royal Opera House Muscat where it will be staged in January 2021.

The last performance will be screened in the Piazza del Popolo and online. The Piazza will also host six recitals with orchestra featuring leading Rossini singers: Olga Peretyatko (August 9), Nicola Alaimo (August 10), Jessica Pratt (August 14), Juan Diego Flórez (August 16), the trio of buffo basses Alfonso Antoniozzi, Paolo Bordogna and Alessandro Corbelli (August 18), Karine Deshayes (August 19).

 

 

For the first time since the Covid-19 outbreak almost two months ago, no deaths have been reported to us from across the music world.

This is a huge relief. Long may it continue.

Past weeks here.

 

Following up on the terrible Concertgebouw tragedy that we reported last week, where 102 of 130 chorus members caught Coronavirus and four died, the Observer has been taking the temperature of scientists in a number of countries.

Most agree it’s too early to talk of cause and effect.

Professor Adam Finn of Bristol University: ‘The evidence for a link with singing and spreading the virus may look compelling but is still anecdotal. Without data from comparably large groups who interacted in the same way but didn’t sing, it’s hard to be certain that the singing was responsible.’

More here.

 

Well, it’s not as though he’ll be needing it any time soon…

 

… and it is for a good cause: feeding the poor in Quebec during the pandemic.

When he says ‘baguette’, he does not mean an elongated loaf of bread.

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