From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Don’t try to pin an adjective to Gerhard: he transcends them all. The son of a Swiss-German father and an Alsatian mother, born in Spanish Catalonia, he studied with Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin, organised the 1936 seminal modernist festival in Barcelona and left a couple of years later to spend the rest of his life in English exile. None of these nationalities was his…
Read on here
From our ballect critic:
Georgian State Ballet Swan Lake 2024.viii.30
by Alastair Macaulay
The ballerina Nina Ananiashvili – a Georgian who starred with the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow and American Ballet Theatre and gave memorable guest performances with many other companies – had a glorious stage career before she became director of the State Ballet of Georgia, to which she has brought Western choreography by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton and others. For two weeks (until September 8), her company has come to the London Coliseum with a Swan Lake that it’s easier to commend for what it isn’t than what it is. The credits claim that the choreography is by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov (not much of either, alas, but that’s par for the course in today’s Swan Lakes) as restaged by Alexey Fadeechev and Ananiashvili.
The dance historian and critic David Vaughan (1924-2017) liked to say “The worst Swan Lake is the one you are watching.” But that never applies to the Georgian State Swan Lake. Unlike Liam Scarlett’s wrong-headed production for the Royal Ballet, this is fittingly set in the Middle Ages, the Age of Chivalry to which this ballet’s spirit belongs, and doesn’t try to turn the story into a palace power struggle. Unlike Peter Wright’s characteristically misguided version for the Birmingham Royal Ballet or Rudolf Nureyev’s for the Paris Opera, it’s not an unstylish patchwork of different performing traditions and musical texts. Unlike Peter Martins’s staging for New York City Ballet, it’s not visually hideous: far from it.
Unlike Kevin McKenzie’s ridiculous treatment for American Ballet Theatre, it doesn’t imply that Odette is transformed into a swan because the sorcerer Rothbart is a closet bestialist, and it doesn’t short-change the audience by giving the ballerina too little dancing in the final act. Unlike Yuri Grigorovich’s re-hash for the Bolshoi Ballet, it doesn’t make the mistake of making the ballet about Prince Siegfried rather than about Odette, queen of the swans (listen to the music, Yuri) though it does make the blunder of making Rothbart a dance role.
It comes to London with four Odette-Odiles. I look forward to catching the first-cast Georgian ballerina Nino Samadashvili at tonight’s (Friday 30) performance. But my own first visit to it brought the young American prodigy Chloe Misseldine, a twenty-two-year-old American Ballet Theatre dancer who was immediately promoted to principal after her New York debut in the famous double role of Odette-Odile. Thursday’s was only her third performance in the role.
Wonderfully mysterious, beautifully long-limbed, and technically brilliant, she has a good stage face that, very compellingly, she mainly keeps mask-like. You hang on her every movement just to find out who she is; I loved the elements of pathos and vulnerability she subtly allowed to emerge during Odette’s great adagio with Siegfried. When, as Odile, she smiles, it’s just a fleeting sense of glee: she’s not one of those (all too many) Odiles who need to signal their evil or their triumph.
She was dancing for the first time with the tall, handsome, Finnish Michel Krčmář, she had one brief partnering mishap, but nothing broke her concentration. By the end, she had the audience in her spell, but I imagine she will be twice as good at later performances. He’s physically strong and expansive but, as yet, trite as an actor.
If Fadeechev and Ananiashvili were to restore Petipa’s first-scene pas de trois and Ivanov’s final lakeside scene, this production would be twice as good. The Georgians are engagingly spirited in the national dances of the ballroom, but as swan-maidens they’re too constrained: physically grand but polite. The male dancers have amplitude but land heavily from jumps. The women’s point shoes – beautifully elegant and without any of the heavy darning that so deforms the Royal Ballet’s feet – have distractingly percussive blocks. None of the acting has convincing detail: as Siegfried’s mother, the queen, Ina Azmaiparashvili, presents queenliness and motherhood in the same all-purpose key throughout. Although ballet in Tbilisi goes back to the nineteenth century, the State Ballet of Georgia is still a work in progress.
The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin has announced the departure of CEO Thomas Schmidt-Ott at the end of the present season. He took on the job in lockdown in 2020 and is leaving at his own request.
Schmidt-Ott said: ”Standing room only’ was my declared goal when I took on the role in the first summer of the pandemic. Audience and program development, market penetration, and repertoire-specific
diversification thanks to the most renowned artists from various genres: in recent seasons, we were able to implement these strategies effectively. I am confident about the upcoming seasons.’
Jo Davies has departed as artistic director after 18 months in the job, and a few days before she was to announce the next season. Insiders say she had a fractious meeting with OA chief executive Fiona Allan.
OA said Davies’ departure followed ‘differences of opinion about how Opera Australia should successfully balance artistic innovation, audience development and commercial imperatives.’
The company has been a hive of bad working relationships and harrassment allegations going back a decade and more.
Davies’ appointment was greeted with some scepticism as she had never held an artistic director post before.
Salzburg today declared 98.2 percent ticket sales.
Bayreuth put up sold-out notices.
Lucerne has yet to announce but it’s clear that the elite festivals are back where they were before Covid.
Which is good for festival finances, but the humility has gone. The rich have inherited the earth all over again.
England on Fire – BalletBoyz
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BalletBoyz bring together a kaleidoscopic group of some of the UK’s hottest talent for their most daring and politically charged production yet. With stunning visuals and live music from folk to punk and everything in-between for England on Fire.
A word aboutBalletBoyz. Michael Nunn and William Trevitt met as students at the Royal Ballet School and danced with the Company for twelve years, performing major roles. During this time, a shared interest in photography and film found them creating a documentary for Channel 4 about their lives as “ordinary” ballet dancers. Their fascination with the twin strands of stage and screen has continued throughout their careers.
After they retired from dancing in 2000, they launched their own dance company, BalletBoyz, bringing young dancers together to create an initial all-male dance company that has grown into a multi-award-winning group that tours the world.
Since then, working with various choreographers, they have added dozens of works to their repertoire. Film production continues side by side with stage works. Young Men, based on themes of war and soldiering, was a unique combination of film-making and story-telling through the language of dance.
England On Fire takes a similar journey. Inspired by Stephen Ellcock and Mat Osman’s art book about love, betrayal, and identity, England on Fire combines place, spirit, and symbol. Creative sparks fly across magnificent imagery, sending dancers whirling through a patchwork of national mythology.
Pulsating live music from singer-songwriter Kami Thompson, post-punk band Gag Salon, and indie favorite Keaton Henson forms a vibrant 3D soundscape. The production also features dynamic dance, mime, theater, and drag from Thick & Tight.
BalletBoyz collaborate with over forty artists in the company’s most ambitious, audacious, and political creation to date.
This week’s free Opera of the Week on slippedisc.com courtesy of OperaVision,is Il barbiere di Siviglia from Stockholm. Inspired by commedia dell’arte, this production of Rossini’s comic masterpiece from Royal Swedish Opera is not only a work of sublime farce, but also a story of male friendship, class, the confrontations of generations and a young woman’s struggle for freedom.
Friday 30.08.2024 1900 CET, 1800 London, 1300 New York
Two and a half years since the conductor Vasily Petrenko left Russia over the Putin invasion of Ukraine, the authorities have finally replaced him at the head of the Svetlanov symphony Orchestra.
The new baton is Филипп Чижевский, Philip Chizhevsky, 39, virtually unknown outside Russia and going nowhere for a while.
We have received this message from the co-chair of the Camden branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign:
Dear Mr Lebrecht
Even among current propaganda and misinformation, this is a malicious lie. Barclays is a bank. It has no ‘complicity’ in anything other than business. In any event, none of its alleged interest has any connection with its sponsorship of London’s most intensive ballet venue.
As for genocide whatever one thinks of Israeli actions in Gaza, there has been no genocide. The population has suffered greatly and estimates of deaths range from 11,000 to 40,000, a proportion of whom were armed Hamas operatives. General estimates put the Gaza population between 500,000 and 2 million.
This is not genocide, by any definition. Some international bodies have accused Israel of plotting genocide, but that is by no means the same thing.
What we have here is a malign attempt to destroy the arts in Britain and other countries by means of a well-organised, well-funded PSC which cares nothing for art and even less for truth. Everyone is entitled to an independent view on Israel-Palestine, but the PSC is out to destroy art at any cost.
I cannot remember an instance when a major festival ordered its entire chorus to reaudition. The Bayreuth press office, however, insists it is entirely routine.
Anyone who would like to continue singing in the choir can reapply and audition, but the choir will not be disbanded. The new choirmaster would like to gain an overview of the existing choir members in this way, but also look for new talent, as is customary every year, even if not to this extent. We stated that this is quite common and point out that all existing choir members are invited to audition so that the new choirmaster can get to know his staff. This approach is also intended to ensure the continued high quality of the Festival Choir.
The job advertisement for the festival choir can already be found on the Internet.
Richard Wagner himself was never this brutal.
This is the letter that went out to professors and employees at the Cleveland Institute of Music, telling them their pay and jobs are to be cut while the boss Paul Hogle (pic) takes home a big bonus.
In yesterday’s letter to the employees, President Hogle reported on actions required to improve CIM’s budget for this new academic year.
The Board of Trustees has now approved the FY25 budget, which includes a pay reduction for the school’s top leadership,certain staff vacancy freezes, a temporary hiring cool-down, and matching faculty compensation to reduced teaching loads due to lower enrollment. Without diminishing the seriousness or personal impact, these actions affect a handful of colleagues.
Compensation and benefits were the final remaining actions required to address this year‘s operating budget. While there is much work still to be done, the Board and Staff Leadership, alongside the Business Model Taskforce, is working hard in hopes that this solution will only impact this fiscal year.
Regarding employee salaries and wages, the Board has decided that it is not possible this year to offer across-the-board raises. This means our salaries and wage rates for the new academic year remain the same as last year for faculty and staff.
Regarding benefits, after several weeks of discussion about arange of possibilities still needed to achieve budgetary goals, we have also decided to suspend this year‘s CIM contribution/match to full-time employees’ retirement funds. This suspension will be in effect as of September 1.
Freezing compensation and suspending the retirement match were not decisions that the Board and Leadership made lightlyor without regard for their impact on employees; to the contrary, we believed that these choices were the best among a series of potentially even more difficult options.
If you have questions about how this affects you, please feel free to reach out to either of us.
Tammie Belton
Vice President of People and Culture
Brian Foss
Chief Financial Officer
From the nation’s leading orchestra of substitutes:
Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons Appoint Alexander Velinzon as New First Associate Concertmaster. A BSO Member Since 2000, Velinzon Has Been Associate Concertmaster Since 2015.
Velinzon Will Also Become Concertmaster of the Boston Pops.
