The composer Ernst Krenek would have turned 120 today.

His greatest hit was the 1927 opera Jonny spielt auf, which the Nazis targeted as the epitome of decadent modernism.

Krenek went into US exile, dying in 1991.

Jonny is hardly ever seen nowadays.

It was reckless of the BBC to consign the last night of the Proms to a little-known Finnish conductor, Dalia Stasevska.

Dalia has yet to prove herself with any UK orchestra and is known to embrace right-on, fully woke opinions. According to one source, she is a fervid supporter of BLM and is demanding the removal of ‘colonialist’ Rule, Britannia from its traditional place in the Last Night concert.

It is now down to Proms chief David Pickard and Radio 3 controller Alan Davey to decide whether they stand up to her, or cave in.

I think we can predict the outcome.

UPDATE: Why Rule Britannia must stay

The Russian dancer Nina Popva, star of American Ballet Theater in the 1940s and later the first director of Houston Ballet, has died in Florida of the pandemic.

photo: Seymour

The latest in today’s Telegraph:

Orchestras will face talent shortage due to Covid rules on music lessons, Royal Philharmonic warns
(No they won’t; they’ll just appoint more foreign players.)

Also in the Telegraph:
School orchestras replace wind instruments with ukuleles as they adapt to post-Covid rules
(Expect a new generation of stand-up comedians)
And from CNN:
A blind musician can feel a conductor’s movements, thanks to a high-tech baton

The international French soprano Chloé Briot has written a statement in La Lettre du musicien, saying she wants ‘to put an end to the rule of silence which reigns in the opera.’

Chloé, who has performed at La Monnaie, Dutch National Opera and London’s Southbank Centre, says she was subjected to repeated sexual assaults by a singer colleague on the stages of the Opéra-Comique in Paris and at the operas of Rennes and Nantes. The assaults continued over a period of weeks and months in an unnamed production – apparently Francesco Filidei’s new work L’Inondation – which warned audiences that ‘some scenes may offend the sensitivity of the public and in particular the youngest.’

Chloé says the singer groped her breast, made motions of oral sex and said he wanted to hurt her. He repeated these assaults in rehearsals and performance. Complaints that she made to the director of the performance and of the opera houses were not acted upon.

She has now filed a criminal complaint with the police at Besancon.