The Eva Marton singing competition in Budapest was won this weekend by a Korean tenor, Jihoon Park, 33. It was not without incident.
Our man on the spot reports:
In his semi-final Jihoon Park sang two arias. First was from La Boheme. Second was from Massenet’s Manon, the weakest of the 7 arias he sang over the three rounds. He finished at 46 minutes and 20 seconds on the ensuing livecast:
What you don’t hear on YouTube but was very very audible in the hall was that, in the last minute of singing, we heard parts of his performance being played back. My first thought was that this was a technical glitch on. It wasn’t — someone in the audience had been filming and managed to start playing back his recording before the singer had finished.
At 46 minutes and 20 seconds you see Eva Marton get very angry. She breaks in before the applause can start, starts pointing towards the area from which the play-back had come and makes comments. She then apologies to the tenor, ask the audience to applaud. The tenor bows and leaves.
Eva Marton then rises from her seat and talks directly to the area of the hall again from which the play-back had come. It’s clear the ‘guilty’ part does not speak Hungarian. She then says in English that he must leave and asks one of the ushers to make this happen. You see an usher somewhat sheepishly identifying the responsible man — who is older rather than younger. He is marched out of the hall.
I have seen this happen at football games but never seen it happen at a concert or competition. I heard some discussion on whether she had been too strict. But at the start of each session we were told that mobile phones should be turned off and this message was repeated on the TV screens showing the singers and their arias. So I think she had good grounds for getting so angry.
The tenor is sick this week. Next week, he’s expected in the Bowl.#
Soprano Diana Damrau writes: In less than a week, @tenorkaufmann and I will reunite once again to sing a program of operetta arias and duets, this time with the @laphil and maestro @gustavodudamel at the @hollywoodbowl.
Jonas and I have collaborated many times throughout our careers, and to say I am more than thrilled to be starting off this season singing glorious operetta duets with him is an understatement. We always have the best time together and there is no doubt next week will be filled with great music and lots of laughter!
The music faculty of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, have been informed that the department is to be eliminated at the end of the current academic year. Five full-time faculty and 17 part-time adjuncts will lose their jobs. There will be no freelance teaching. The department of World Languages and Cultures has also been scrapped.
Wittenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and has been a nationally recognized school of music. Among prominent Lutheran musicians who attended Wittenberg are Susan Palo Cherwien, Wayne Wold, and Robert Hobby.
A report from slippedisc.com by Susan Hall:
The major event at New York’s Little Island this summer is an abbreviated version of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with all seven roles sung by premier countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. It is being performed through September 22. The Little Island ampitheater was packed with
people of all ages and colors.
The Little Island Figaro breaks out of the opera to perform parts of Beaumarchais’s play on which it is based. Costanzo’s range is remarkable. While the beauty of his voice is best heard in the female solos, he growls and crackles a bit three and a half octaves below as Figaro and the Count. Cherubino’s mezzo fits perfectly. What is striking is the illusion of the displaced voice. All the characters are miming on stage as Costanzo sings their roles. They are actors not singers. Great opera singers often can’t act. It helps if they do.
Voila. The problem is solved by the team of Costanzo joined by director Dustin Wills and music director Dan Schlosberg. We, the audience, place the voice in the actors’ mouths even when it’s coming from Costanzo.
Recently playwright Lucas Hnath staged a solo production by Tony-winning actress Deirdre Connell. The effect of a real voice of a real human being inhabiting an actress, body to the voice, makes compelling theater. You can imagine Marni Nixon singing for Audrey Hepburn in
My Fair Lady. Hepburn sings on film. Nixon stands in the studio recording the song to Hepburn’s lip movements and gestures. Final adjustments are made by recording technicians. That process is off-screen.
The delicate matching process in Hnath’s play takes place live before our eyes. Connell takes the ventriloquist’s dummy to a new level. No matter how much you love a taped voice, it is enhanced enormously when the voice is embodied.
Costanzo talks about singing ‘duet’ as disconcerting. He is singing one role on stage and drops a needle down on a recording of his own voice now displaced and singing with him. Schlosberg’s arrangement of the score is brisk and full of rhythm. He adds a saxophone solo.
The setting in which the amphitheater, usually enclosed in Greece, opened up to the Hudson River and the setting sun beyond is like an expansive Santa Fe opera where the back of the stage reveals the Jemez mountains. A universe is created, perfect for operatic performance.
When Beaumarchais contributed to the financing of the American Revolution, he must have anticipated this thoroughly engaging performance of his play turned into opera. Frankly, Mozart would have composed for movies if he were alive today.
The brilliant Bossa Nova pioneer has died in Los Angeles, aged 83. The cause, say his family, was long Covid.
Mendes settled in the US in the 1960s amid political and military turbulence in Brazil that saw him briefly arrested. His theme song (below) became an everlasting earworm.
Forget the on-stage drama.
San Francisco Opera has got itself into a knife-edge thrller with its orchestra musicians, who are out of contract.
On Friday night, moments before Un Ballo in Maschera, the Orchestra agreed a one-month extension to the previous contract. It runs to the end of September.
What happens next? Bite your nails.
The musicians say: ‘While this is a positive step forward, there is still much work to be done to ensure that we can reach a multi-year agreement that provides stability and a path forward both for orchestra musicians and the organization as a whole.’
Anthony Checchia, who played a vital role at Marlboro Music for nhalf a century, died this weekend, aged 94. His is survived by his wife, soprano Benita Valente and their son Peter.
From the Marlboro obit:
Checchia first attended Marlboro in 1956 as a bassoonist, one of an exceptional group of young woodwind players. In 1958, Rudolf Serkin asked Checchia to take on the administrative leadership of Marlboro. Over the years, he worked tirelessly to advance its mission and ideals, working with such eminent resident artists as Pablo Casals, Marcel Moyse, Felix Galimir, Alexander Schneider, Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Eugene Istomin, Mitsuko Uchida, and members of the Guarneri and Juilliard String Quartets and Beaux Arts Trio.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Checchia co-created the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society to ensure the city would be a regular destination for leading musicians. From the outset, the goal was to create an organization that would maintain the highest artistic standards; open doors to classical music for all audiences through low ticket prices and a welcoming environment; and present artists of diverse nationalities, ethnicities, and perspectives. Today, under the artistic leadership of Miles Cohen, PCMS presents 50 performances annually. Checchia also established PCMS as a leading proponent of composers and new music; to date, it has commissioned more than 100 works by composers including William Bolcom, Jennifer Higdon, Leon Kirchner, Shulamit Ran, Bernard Rands, George Rochberg, Gunther Schuller, Ralph Shapey, Melinda Wagner, Richard Wernick, and Ellen Taft Zwilich.
The death has been announced, after a long illness, of the drum professor Martin France.
Using electronic and sequenced drums and percussion, France featured on more than 100 albums and appeared regularly in Hamburg with the NDR Big Band.
The Broadway musical Waitress is now available to rent and buy across a variety of streaming platforms for the many UK fans of the show. Based on the film of the same name, it follows a young waitress in a diner who dreams of leaving her job and forging a life of her own.
Filmed at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2021, where the show made its home temporarily post-pandemic, the cast was led by the hit musical’s creator Sara Bareilles as Jenna, alongside Drew Gehling as Dr Pomatter, Charity Angél Dawson as Becky, Caitlin Houlahan as Dawn. Waitress has a book by Jessie Nelson, direction by Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus and choreography by Lorin Latarro.
It had its UK premiere at the Adelphi Theatre in 2019, the sold-out run prematurely truncated when lockdowns closed theatres although there was a tour in 2021, visiting locations nationwide.
This is not the movie but a film of the Broadway stage musical. It was first shown in UK cinemas earlier this year and is now available more widely across a variety of streaming platforms as well as DVDs and Blu-Rays. It is not yet available in the US.
Available to rent in HD for £3.49 or buy for £11.99. Rentals include 30 days to start watching this video and 48 hours to finish once started.
We have learned belatedly of the death from Alzheimers complications of the cellist Gayle Mae Smith, a pupil of Casals in Puerto Rico and of Piatigorsky in Los Angeles (pictured).
She enjoyed an international solo career and went on to teach at various US universities, as well as Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Just in:
The event JONAS KAUFMANN & Slovak Philharmonic, which was supposed to take place on 8th September 2024 at 7pm, is postponed due to health reasons of Mr. Kaufmann for a new date on 4th September 2025 at 7pm. Tickets remain valid. In the event of an unsatisfactory alternative date, customers can request a refund. This application must be submitted by 20th September 2024 (inclusive). Customers who have purchased tickets through the predpredaj.sk website will receive this information by email. In case of non-delivery of the email, check the spam / spam folder or contact reklamacie@predpredaj.sk
The Latvian Ainars Rubikis signed on last week as chief conductor of the Tyrolean Symphony Orchestra Innsbruck, Austria.
They are not pleased about that in Kassel, Germany, where Rubikis was recently appointed General Music Director of the Staatstheater, starting next summer.
Kassel officials say that in Innsbruck he will only ‘conduct a few concerts’.
Insiders, though, say there is trouble ahead. Rubikis was not the musicians’ choice in Kassel. They voted 91.5 percent in favour of the British conductor Keren Hasan. The selection committee split 3-3 between the two conductors and the casting vote was left to Timon Gremmels, Hesse’s Minister of Art and Culture.
