An agent worms his way into the Tchaikovsky Competition
NewsOne of a tiny handful of western citizens at the Putin-Gergiev Tchaikovsky Competition is Alessandro Ariosi of Italy, a member of the voice jury.
Ariosi, 45, is a controversial figure. A close associate of Placido Domingo, he is based in Switzerland, near Lugano, and lists some impressive singers among his clients – Vittorio Grigolo, Sonya Yoncheva, Aida Garifúllina, Leo Nucci and Erwin Schrott.
Ariosi is the subject of a long-running police investigation into opera dealings in Torino. He is also involved with the Kazak opera house in Astana.
He seems to be the only music-biz operator in the current competition.
A post laden with suggestion and innuendo – we don’t expect journalists to be entirely objective, but this is practically slander!
Couldn’t agree more.. so politically charged. I seem to remember a certain great pianist Van Cliburn who “dared” to participate in the very same competition at the height of the cold war, behind “enemy” lines. Shame on him? I don’t think so, but that is what might be said of him in today’s age of social media fanaticism… Back then, his participation (and triumph) served as an example of the power music has to serve as a bridge, to transcend our differences, and to give us some hope of a future. His participation opened up a subsequent musical exchange that was not thought possible in a political environment where the nuclear conflict between the world’s superpowers was a very real possibility… Shouldn’t we at least try to again view music and arts as a unifying force, rather than a tool to instigate further division?
Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky ‘effect’ had zero influence on the cold war. Music and politics? Oil and water.
Russia was not engaged in a brutal war (the worst since WW11) when Van Cliburn entered to Tchaikovsky Competition. There’s the difference.
It’s called POV (point of view) journalism.
AKA activism.
So, uh…what’s the deal? Is there a problem with Kazak opera house? Or Domingo? What’s he being investigated for? And, it seems the author hates this guy (enough to court slander!) So, again I ask…what’s the deal? And why is there almost NO DETAIL in this quasi article?
Or indeed why bother to mention that the “investigation” was closed by the Turin prosecutor almost as soon as it was opened.
What’s the deal? Are you kidding? With being part of the jury of this now ruined competition his guy is supporting an aggressive autocratic regime just for one purpose: His own profit. It’s not to compare at all with Van Cliburn. Simply disgusting.
Yet the Van Cliburn competition suffers no stigmatisation despite being hosted by the 2003 illegal warmongerers.
Do you see many US pianists actually winning the Cliburn, Anthony? No, the US is basically supporting non US talent. Everyone is fine taking US money but suddenly there’s a problem with our politics? Now THAT’s hypocrytical!
https://slippedisc.com/2020/06/domingo-is-mentioned-in-turin-investigation/
Of course the comments from the people outside of the industry are not informed and merely assumptions. It’s hard to know the details when you just read bits of info here in there. In the reality Ariosi is the most corrupt industry operator there is.
Ariosi is closely associated with the corrupt monopolist Domingo who even after the scandals relating to his inappropriate advances on female colleagues (known for ages) and his involvement with the Mexican sex gang, still has the biggest influence on casting directors and opera companies around the world. Ariosi also is a direct topic of a number of court cases in Italy referring to sly corruption schemes in the theatres, where he is the direct instigator and the benefactor of these schemes. Of course, in Italy all the court cases are suppresed due to his close ties with questionable groups.
On the professional note, he does represent known artists and he uses them to play the dirtiest of games with all the opera companies. Double and triple booking his artists, then pulling them out of contracts last minute, replacing them with others in his roaster and creating a sense of chaos where the theatres are desperate to use his solutions for the problems he himself has created. If there is one prominent agent in the industry who continuously disturbs and manipulates the already fragile ecosystem of the opera industry
– that’s him. And, of course, with the safety blanket of certain questionable associations in the world from Mexico to Italy and beyond – he would be the one to go to otherwise boycotted competition providing an international stamp on the competition.
Would the European leading houses continue to work with Ariosi? Hell yes! Cause who they have to be accountable to, the taxpayer?! Pfff…
As for the artists continuing to work with him – for all of these reasons Ariosi is a businessman who sells a product. In his case the product happens to be artists instead of diamonds or oil, but he gets the bookings, he provides jobs. The artists are either in the unknown or decide to close their eyes at the obvious in order to provide for their families. There is no place for ethics here, the artists are all absolutely desperate to have jobs, even the biggest ones you think have no problems with bookings. Why are they desperate? Because the opera industry is in absolute chaos due to amateurs leading it to the grave for the last decades. If you look around and read all of the biographies of the current opera leads around the world it will be clear in a second that none of them have anything to do with music or art. They are all glorified clerks, administrators with questionable talents with no specific expertise. With their clueless, bad decisions they managed to kill most of the sensible expert voices in the industry and made it an impossible place for any proper artists to have a properly adequate acarerr unless they are supported either with mafiosi characters or coming from money. In this jungle with no rules the people who can band the rules, very much like Ariosi, are thriving
along with their russian and otherwise questionable counterparts.