Ida with Ancerl, fire and ice. Nothing comes close.

 

Khatia Buniatishvili has joined the international bling bearers.

I am happy and honored to become an ambassador of Cartier – legendary and iconic Maison. 💙✨
Accepting inessential human needs makes them measurable, prevents their growth into greed. This is how I see Cartier – the golden proportion of glamour… never less, never too much.
Thank you Cartier ❤️ It is a pure joy to be part of your family and I’m keen to accomplish together in future many beautiful things, with your signature charm and glamour, for Arts and Culture; against inequalities and for celebration of uniqueness of every individual.

Canadian Opera Company bows to the inevitable:

An Important Update on the Canadian Opera Company’s 2020/2021 Season
By Alexander Neef

With the changing temperatures in the air and the fall months upon us, it’s hard to imagine that an entire summer has gone by — and, with it, continued developments around COVID-19 guidelines, including allowances for performing arts organizations in Toronto.

Earlier this summer, our team made a promise to ourselves – and to you –to explore every possible option for going ahead with the remainder of our planned 2020/2021 season. Given the ongoing uncertainties around large-scale gatherings, however, it has become clear that cancelling all our originally planned winter and spring programming is the right decision for our staff, artists, and audience members.

Affected programming includes:

– Bizet’s Carmen, Janáček’s Katya Kabanova, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
– The world premiere of our recently commissioned Opera for Young Audiences production, Fantasma
– All special events, including our annual Operanation and Fine Wine Auction fundraisers

 

The next director of the Vienna Volksoper will be the Dutch opera director Lotte de Beer, presently head of the Dutch ensemble Operafront.

De Beer, 39, has been given a seven-year term.

She is promising to perform more operetta, less opera.

 

Nicola Benedetti said:

‘Many musicians are facing retraining, many are talking about leaving the country. That’s not just fabrication, that’s a real-life situation that we don’t want to see happen. This is not just about saying we want hand-outs, it’s about everybody talking and finding a way out of this that is safe, but that looks to preserve music [and] performance long-term.’

 

And in Birmingham:

He’s back in Hong Kong with the Philharmonic. First concert expected on October 23.

Hasn’t been in New York for half a year.

We hear that the emollient and diplomatic Hans Boon, a calming presence in Herbert Breslin’s hectic agency, died two weeks ago in Conneticut of a stroke. He had appaently been working on his memoirs, a tantalising thought.

Hans worked for Breslin through the Pavarotti years. He personally looked after the pianist Alicia de Larrocha and the soprano Kallen Esperian, among others. Before joining Breslin, he worked for Pavarotti’s record company, Decca.

He knew everyone.

 

The Austrian federal government and the state and city of Salzburg have committed 262 million euros to improve the festival’s performance venues over the next ten years.

The most urgent case for an upgrade is the Grosses Festpielhaus, which is 60 years old and barely updated.

Even the Green Party wants to see it improved – possibly with a musrhoom farm on the roof.