The BBC has announced that Sir Andrew Davis, long-serving chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, has ‘withdrawn from Thursdy’s Prom due to ill health’.
He will be subbed by the present chief conductor Sakari Oramo, in Mahler 7th rather than 10th.
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Crazy For You – Gillian Lynne Theatre Broadway director/choreographer Susan Stroman has gifted London with her ebullient production of the Gershwin musical, Crazy For You. All fuss and pink feathers and spangles, this can’t be mistaken for anything else – it’s a feelgood show with tapping feet, some gentle jokes and, above all, a world-class score. Here are all the great songs from the Gershwin catalogue, all sung and danced very nicely by a large cast of British performers. The standout is Charlie Stemp, a young British dancer who is a truly remarkable ‘find’. He first caught my eye in a small part in Wicked in the West End and I remember writing at the time that there was a ‘boy’ in the cast who was ready for the big time and I hoped someone would give him the chance to shine as he surely would. The ‘someone’ was super producer Cameron Mackintosh and the show was the revival of the cockney musical Half a Sixpence in which young Charlie’s tapshoes shone, as I had predicted. He went on to make his Broadway debut in Hello Dolly! where he was inevitably overshadowed by that show’s star, Bette Middler, but it was clear that when he was allowed to shine, he could. It is appropriate that the musical he now carries, as the leading man in Crazy For You, is at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in the West End. Gillian Lynne would have loved Charlie Stemp. The ground-breaking choreographer of Cats and Phantom was often heard to bemoan in private the lack of talented British male dancers. Now, in Charlie Stemp, we’ve got a homegrown dancing star who can triumph in all forms of show dancing, especially tap. He can sing well enough, and he has immense charm, but his real talents are in his feet and he fulfils all the demands of Stroman’s choreography and guides Crazy For You’s featherlight plot to a satisfactory finale. It’s worth mentioning that Crazy For You isn’t actually a Gershwin musical, it’s a musical constructed from many wonderful Gershwin songs, based loosely, very loosely, on Girl Crazy, which was a Gershwin musical with an equally silly but slightly different plot and was chiefly remarkable for having made stars of both Ginger Rodgers and Ethel Merman, who led that 1930 cast. |
In what appears to be a plea-bargain, the former opera star and University of Michigan professor pleaded guilty with his husband Scott Walters in Houston to drugging and raping a young vocalist in 2010.
Daniels and Walters (pictured at wedding) face eight years of probation and will be ordered to register as sex offender for the rest of their lives.
Their victim Samuel Schultz said: ‘I am glad that the defendants have acknowledged by their guilty pleas the truth of my traumatic experience, and that this portion of my nightmarish ordeal has finally concluded.’
The Russian soprano has filed suit against the Metropolitan Opera and its general manager Peter Gelb for cancelling her singing contracts. She is ‘seeking damages for national origin discrimination, defamation, and breach of contract.’ Her lawyer is The Law Offices of Julie R. Ulmet. They are demanding $360,000.
Netrebko claims that ‘due to the Met’s requirement that Netrebko issue public statements opposing the actions of Russian government…, Netrebko and her family and friends in Russia have suffered the risk of harm, retaliation, and retribution by the Russian government.’
The risk, such as it is, appears to be small. Her husband, Yusif Eyvazov continues to be welcomed in Russia as a performer. Her close relatives have left. There is little objective evidence to support this
pecuniary claim.
A sudden illness for pianist Ben Grosvenor has brought in the Leeds winner Alim Besembaiev for tonight’s BBC Prom.
He’s playing the second Rachmaninov concerto.
A headline on the website at its dumbest and meanest:
André Rieu facts: the Dutch violinist’s wife, concerts, net worth and his Johann Strauss Orchestra
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
It’s not often one gets a chance to compare two composers who are brother and sister. In fact, apart from the Mendelssohns, there is hardly another instance except Mozart and his inauspicious sister, Nannerl. In the Mendelssohn family, Fanny was the first to show talent…
Read on here.
And here.
Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore – Tea For Two
This irresistible black and white clip is from a Dinah Shore television special from 1958. Undoubtedly rehearsed, but so relaxed and so enjoying themselves and each other here are Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore that they might be sitting in her living room.
Just some classic songs from the Great American Songbook, performed by two professionals who are so sure of themselves and their talent that you could almost believe they were making them up as they went along. Two friends, with enough confidence to insert spontaneous asides, sitting comfortably, no theatrics, no choreography, no fancy lighting or sets or costumes.
They are clearly so happy being Side by Side, which just happens to be the last song in their set, that they make us happy too.
Talk of playing out of her comfort zone… you will not see the like again .
Seven)Suns, a NYC-based string quartet, has recorded a note-for-note 10th-anniversary reinterpretation of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “One of Us Is the Killer” album.
And who said heavy metal was dead? Let alone the string quartet.
Here’s more.
The pianist in the 1935 film “Dreams of Love” is none other than the dreamy Chilean, living in Germany at the time.
Watch, and be amazed.
The FAZ has an interesting profile of Daniel Stratievsky, 37, music director of the Frankfurt Chamber Opera.
He has some acute observations on conducting in small towns in Germany and he believes that Russia ‘remains a criminal state’.
Read here.
