The general manager of the Met has been talking to France-Musique about Covid, Met closure and the future.
He said the US Government takes a passive attitude to the arts no matter which party is in power and the only way for the Met to survive is for its employees to accept a large pay cut.
‘For opera to survive in a sustainable way, everyone who works in opera must understand the importance of the costs, especially in New York where everything is more expensive […] and today we must agree to lower these salaries….
David Elliott, the voice of Harvard’s radio station WHRB for 58 years, has died at 78.
Richard Burgin, founder of the literary magazine Boulevard and composer of six CDs of music, has died in Clayton, Missouri, of the effects of Parkinson’s Disease.
Richrd was the son of Boston Symphony concertmaster, also named Richard Burgin, and the concert violinist Ruth Posselt.
Sofia National Opera will stage a new production of Richard Strauss Elektra on November 26, its first-ever production in Bulgaria.
The conductor is an American, Evan-Alexis Christ.
The orchestra will be arrayed at different points around the house to ensure safe spacing.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz tonight asked the public ‘not to meet anyone’ in Europe’s toughest lockdown, starting Tuesday.
‘One contact is one contact too many,’ said Kurz. People will be allowed to leave their homes only for essential food purchases and emergency medical care. Schools have been shut.
Austria has the highest number of new infections in Europe.
The Salzburg Festival has postponed next summer’s rollout event until mid-December at the earliest.
The joint concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera, Benjamin Bowman, has found alternative employment. Bowman has made this disclosure on social media:
I emptied my Met locker the other day. If that wasn’t difficult enough, I then walked outside with my suitcase and saw this “Met Stars” poster at Lincoln Center, featuring 100% NON-Met musicians. Struck me as quite insensitive and insulting. It was a profoundly emotional moment for me.
I’m one of the lucky ones. Very recently, I was offered a contract to lead a fine German orchestra for several months.
After 8 months of borrowing and draining my savings accounts, I will finally be able to start to rebuilding. The cost: I leave my family tomorrow, for an unknown period of time. I’m elated and devastated at the same time.
Back to our situation here in the USA though:
In a country that doesn’t support the arts very well, it is imperative that management values what it is “selling”, and that we seek empathetic leadership with sincere vision – both artistic and economical. Our lives – Met lives – are being majorly impacted by this, every day. A third of our orchestra has already had to leave the NYC area — and that’s not to speak of myriad other challenges we are all facing everyday, with no end in sight.
I hope that this world-class orchestra returns to work one day with a respectable contract and a dignified outlook. The Met musicians certainly deserve this, and the international community too.
Sadly, healthcare plus $0 isn’t enough to retain much talent these days. We need advocacy on all levels, urgently. The future of our culture depends on it.
Authored by M.Sc. students Nadav Bhonker and Shunit Haviv Hakimi, along with their adviser Prof. Ran El-Yaniv at the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion-Institute of Technology, the paper indicates that it is possible to model and optimize personalized jazz preferences.
If they can do jazz improvisation, how long before we get a new cadenza for the Beethoven violin concerto?
