Is the CBSO ashamed of its opera?
UncategorizedBirmingham Opera Company is about to perform Tippett’s opera New Year.
It is an extremely rare event, dividing opinions sharply on itsm merits.
Keith Warner will direct. BOC Music Director Alpesh Chauhan will conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Nowhere is this information hinted at on the CBSO website.
Not a priority for the present management, apparently.
If Birmingham Opera is a separate entity, it’s not really up to CBSO to promote the show. There are orchestras all over the place that play intermittently in the pit for the local opera company, and I never see them promoting the show.
And BOC is particularly careful about its marketing policy, almost always restricting sales and performance information until very close to the event. These performances were only announced less than a week ago. Anyone with any genuine knowledge of Birmingham or these organisations would be wholly unsurprised to learn that the information had been omitted from the CBSO website at BOC’s request.
The LPO puts all its Glyndebourne performances on its website, so the CBSO could do the same for this.
https://lpo.org.uk/whats-on/
The LPO is the resident orchestra for Glyndebourne. Different relationship
So what a London Orchestra does has to be followed by orchestras elsewhere?
No, CBSO just putting people off with permitting phones, filming and drinks.
Have you been to a CBSO concert recently or do you spend all your time on a (computer) keyboard?
I have attended three in the last two months and didn’t see anyone drinking a drink or using a phone during the performance.
Don’t tell Emma: if she finds out she’ll have something else to ruin.
The main problem in Birmingham is that our CEO, who has no prior music experience, is telling the public that orchestral music is boring and needs phones and drinks in the hall to improve it.
Well, having been in touch with CBSO box-office to inquire about this, they told me the opposite – that they want to be clear that phones are not allowed while music is playing. While they seem to have realised their communications may have been confusing, there seems certainly to be an interest from the outside in exacerbating that confusion to harm the orchestra.
Their website does not say ‘not allowed’. It says:
‘We are very happy for you to take photographs and short video clips at our concerts. We suggest that you take pictures and videos during applause breaks.’
Well I have communications from their marketing department, which I will quote: “ We not encouraging filming during the performance and simply want to make it clear that audience members are free to capture something to remember their experience by at the appropriate moments – namely during applause breaks.
We have also introduced pre-concert announcements to remind audiences to take photos/video in the applause breaks and be mindful of other audience members.”
As I said, I think they’re realizing the confusion. But there is also a central popular and mediatic interest in exacerbating the confusion.
Er – I’ve been taking drinks into the auditorium at concerts for years. Every other concert hall allows this – I do sympathise if you’ve been missing out. Might sweeten a few tempers…
I think you’ll find that our CEO is pointing out the obvious – that, in common with orchestras elsewhere, audiences are getting older and shrinking. Unless we adapt to the different expectations of younger generations we only have a short time left for the diminishing demographic to disappear. It appears that that is what you want.
But if you go to the CBSO’s website you see mission statements such as this from Emma’s ‘Season of Joy’:
‘encouraging new thinking around the CBSO’s work to attract young audiences and support the orchestra’s ambition of further developing an anti-racist approach to work.’
Or a recent policy Emma brought in after she got flooded with feedback and complaints:
‘These are the kind of behaviours we consider to be unreasonable or unacceptable:
Verbal abuse or aggression either in person, over the phone, via email or through any other digital platform (including derogatory or discriminatory remarks, shouting and rudeness).
Excessive letters, calls, emails or contact via social media.
Unreasonable demands (such as expecting a solution or answer immediately or taking up so much time that it impacts our ability to provide our services to other customers).
We reserve the right to cancel tickets and/or stop someone attending or engaging with future CBSO events.’
“Aggression,” yes. Nobody likes aggro, as a basic policy. But where does she stand on any and all “microaggressions”?
From: Richard Stanbrook.
Date: 11th June 2024.
Where, oh where, are the autocratic maestri? Can you imagine Fritz Reiner, George Szell, Herbert Von Karajan, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Adrian Boult and, more recent, Sir John Elliot Gardiner, to name only six podium legends, tolerating this nonsense from some jumped-up, petty CEO with delusions of adequacy?
I’d love to see this individual transported back in time and watch her doing battle with Otto Klemperer and Arturo Toscanini.
Ouch!
Adrian Boult was music director of the CBSO for two periods during his career and during that time he put up with the roof of the venue collapsing, the audience walking out on a Bartok premiere. He performed weekly in suburban cinemas where the entire audience was permitted to smoke – an innovation that he endorsed. If you think he was such a snowflake that he’d have been flustered by a couple of people taking a quick photo of a curtain call, you don’t know much about Boult.
As for the others…well, let’s see: three infamous bullies, a literal Nazi, a guy who got fired from his own orchestra after physically assaulting a performer and Sir Thomas Beecham, who refused to work in Birmingham anyway because the CBSO, bored of his grandstanding, refused to give him the MD job.
So maybe not quite the winning argument you seem to think.
Have you noticed that all the people that you mention are dead? Apart, of course, from Elliot Gardiner who is currently reviewing his approach to motivating performers.
Are you suggesting that ‘Classical’ music should return to wigs and frock coats as well?
Can you explain exactly what is wrong in your view with the statements you have quoted?
New Year is an opera that I would travel to to see (but not to Birmingham).
Why not to Birmingham, RW2013?
If they are not ashamed of their CEO, I see no rational reason why they should be ashamed of Tippett, opera, or just anything at all.
New Year does indeed divide opinions, but when artists of the calibre of Vick and Chauhan decide to revive it, it’s an important occasion and one with which the orchestra should be proud to be associated.
I’m not expecting CBSO management to promote it actively, but to decline even (for example) to add a news item about it to their website strikes me as churlish and petulant.
I’m confident they have not declined to refer to it on their website, and indeed Ian Hartland comments on this thread that he did find a reference to it.
Sadly, Graham Vick is no longer with us to revive New Year – he passed away all too soon in 2021.
Warner not Vick. Details of the performances on the CBSO website!
The event has only just been announced, and, as mentioned in another comment, the CBSO are providing the orchestra for another organisation’s event.
I like SlippedDisc a lot, but I’m afraid you seem to have a vendetta against the CBSO, an orchestra I know and love. And every new item about them seems to draw out the same barbed comments from, I perceive, a relatively small number of bitter individuals.
The big CBSO opera news is that Kazuki Yamada will be conducting them in Madam Butterfly at Symphony Hall on 29 June. If recent concerts with their Music Director are anything to go by, it’s going to be very special.
“Them” — as in a concert version?
A semi-staged performance at Symphony Hall directed by Thomas Henderson. Maki Mori as Cio-Cio San, Pene Pati as Pinkerton and Christopher Purves as Sharpless. The CBSO Chorus, too. They appear to have now made Grand Tier seats available, but there is a smattering of seats available in other areas of the hall. More details here:
https://cbso.co.uk/events/madam-butterfly
Rather than asking that question here, I suggest you look at the CBSO website where you will find the answer.
Bostin’Symph wrote, “you seem to have a vendetta against the CBSO”.
Not true! I’m confident that most or all of the complaints about Emma Stenning are from people who love the orchestra and the music it makes. It would be more accurate to state that Ms Stenning is pursuing a vendetta against a loyal audience.
To coin a cliché, her continued silence on this topic speaks volumes. She’s not stupid; she must be aware that she has painted herself into a corner. The only honourable thing for her to do now is acknowledge (as the PM did, promptly, last Friday) that she has made a mistake.
At a public meeting on 28 February at the CBSO Centre, focussing on future developments, Emma Stenning did acknowledge that they had gone too far too quickly with the Don Quixote/Eroica concert (mood lighting, video screens, extra-musical interpretations etc). She promised that any further ventures would be subtler and flagged in the season brochure beforehand, rather than being imposed on a pre-booked concert. I believe the mobile phone issue has been explored, debated and honed to an acceptable degree.
My own experience of CBSO concerts in the past weeks has been positive and joyful.
Bostin’Symph (Robert Mrozek)
Emma Stenning’s SlippedDisc story count: 13
Is it 25 when you get a certificate?
It’s getting to the point where these stories are probably generating more sympathy for Stenning than anything else.
I also wonder how much time Norman is spending each week posing as doners and orchestra members in this comments section?
I’m genuinely sympathetic to the concerns, but this beyond pathetic.
I fear you’re correct (not about NL writing comments; that’s absurd) but about the net effect of this largely-fabricated CBSO-bashing. I’m a big fan of this site but its Birmingham sources seem badly-informed, to say the least, and what is described here often bears no relation to what has been going on in the concert hall.
I had my doubts about the new CEO, and still do to some extent, but not for any of the largely spurious reasons rehearsed on SD (and repeated without fact-checking by the national media). There’s a faint aroma of misogyny; it’s not pleasant and unfortunately it’s getting stronger.
Have another look Norman. I found it on cbso.co.uk in the whats on section between Madame Butterfly and the Schubert concert at Town Hall with Ed Gardner.
Better late than never, I guess. I’m really looking forward to this production, and will be making a round trip of over 200 miles to see it.
By the way, why do some people find it so difficult to distinguish between criticism of the CBSO’s management and criticism of the orchestra itself? It’s precisely because we love the orchestra and want it to succeed that we are so upset by management decisions which alienate the audience and thereby threaten the survival of the orchestra and the livelihoods of its members.
Because Antwerp I’m afraid this constant stream of misinformation and bullying IS affecting the orchestra itself, even if you feel it shouldn’t.
If people love the orchestra as you say, the best thing they can do is stay away from Slipped Disc and Norman’s quest to damage The CBSO.
Thank you Ian for pointing out that BOC is clearly on the CBSO website. If it was advertised later than you expected it is because the Dream Tent has only recently been confirmed – this is usual for this collaboration. As you can imagine it’s not easy to find a suitable venue for such a huge project.
To clear up some more confusion from comments further up:
Drinks have now been allowed since post covid, years before Emma was appointed.
Phones: There is an announcement at the start of each concert, in a main series concert it states you can film at the start, during applause and at the end – not throughout the performance. There may be some lighter pops concerts where, with artist’s permission and copyright withstanding, the audience are able to film clips.
Once again Norman is trying to cause a stir with not only something that isn’t news, it isn’t true.
Why would I want to damage the CBSO. We just tell it as it is.
Firstly Norman, this article alone proves that that is not true. It is incorrect.
Secondly, in last week’s article you picked one poorly sold concert and ignored the 3 or 4 well sold concerts leading up to it. That is misleading, and hardly impartial journalism.
Thirdly you have written 13/14 articles about the CBSO since the beginning of the year, always provoking negativity.
I don’t see any other orchestra getting this treatment, so you can see why people might think you are trying to damage the orchestra.
I appreciate the sentiment but Norman, omitting positive balanced information and focusing on the negatives isn’t “telling it as it is”.
“misinformation”? I searched the CBSO website on Sunday – there was no mention then of New Year. Maybe CBSO’s management responded to NL’s post by adding a page about it on Monday?
“bullying”? To point out serious errors of judgement that are jeopardising the livelihoods of the players is not bullying.
“this constant stream of misinformation and bullying IS affecting the orchestra” – in what way?
As for phones, CBSO’s website still says “We are very happy for you to take photographs and short video clips at our concerts. We … SUGGEST (my caps) that you take pictures and videos during applause breaks”. It’s disappointing that CBSO’s management seems to be unwilling, or just too lazy, to amend that wording to bring it into line with the announcements in the hall.
Alex, the title of this article appears to question the CBSO’s commitment to Opera. The irony is that not only is the collaboration with Birmingham Opera Company on the CBSO website, but it’s right next to the semi-staged performance of Madame Butterfly conducted by Kazuki Yamada on 29th June. That’s something I am very much looking forward to and would recommend anyone doubting the health of musical life in Birmingham should come to, and experience for themselves.
Very strange, Slipped Disc – I found it immediately and easily, with details and a dashing picture of Alpesh. This personalised campaign is becoming overtly dishonest.
Another CBSO donor wrote, “This personalised campaign is becoming overtly dishonest.”
That’s incorrect. I have been monitoring the CBSO website regularly since this controversy arose. CBSO posted their page about New Year AFTER NL started this thread.
“People new to opera should probably not attend ‘New Year’ and instead opt for a lighter, more joyous work. If it is ever programmed.”