The festival, founded by the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, has the board at war once more with a bumbling chief executive.
Since (Mark) Hanna took over, nearly all of the nonprofit’s established artistic and business leaders have been replaced. And in recent months the board has seen an exodus, especially since chairwoman Alicia Mullen Gregory was ousted from her leadership position in July. She then chose to leave the organization. In total, 10 board members have resigned…
The crisis has come to a slow boil as revelations of a $600,000 deficit came to light. Demands for an explanation were never met, former board members said…
Here is a local review by Peter Marsh in the Totnes Pulse of the substitute ‘festival’ put on by the Dartington Estate after the traditional event was driven into exile.
After the demise of the long-established Dartington music summer school in its usual form, a new version of the festival took place last week. ChoralFest was organised by the Dartington Hall Trust (the charity running Dartington) as a “differently-formatted” version of an event it chose last year to discontinue, on the grounds of high costs and the charity’s own dire financial state.
The summer school has been a fixture at Dartington for more than 70 years, attracting world-class musicians performing in concerts and running courses. Summer schools in recent years have lasted four weeks, spanning a range of musical forms from medieval to contemporary, and including folk, jazz, composition and conducting skills. It led to many collaborations involving people from different musical genres. The final concert in 2023 was a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass.
In contrast, the programme for the eight-day ChoralFest looked thin. The public concerts centred on five short evening recitals by professional singers best known for their operatic prowess. Most of them doubled up as tutors, giving singing lessons to the 70 or so people who had signed up for the week. They also rehearsed for a public performance of a Russian choral work given last Saturday.
In contrast to the usual summer school format, no instrumentalists took part, apart from two pianists. The near-absence of instrumentalists saved money but for most people detracted from the festival’s appeal. Each week of the summer schools in recent years has featured at least one big choral work with a choir of more than 100 and an orchestra….
We have been notified of the passing of Mikhail Muntian, a prolific Russian keyboard player who toured as regular accompanist to the violist Yuri Bashmet.
Muntian started out as harpsichordist in Rudolf Barshai’s Moscow Chamber Orchestra. In October 1975, together with Fiodor Drujinin of the Beethoven Quartet, he gave the world premiere of Shostakovich’s last work, the viola sonata opus 147. His repertoire ranged from pre-Bach to post-Soviet.
The Canadian cellist Amanda Forsyth has taken to publishing pictures of herself enjoying the summer night life in New York, her fans report.
We are hearing from several sources that Eberhard Friedrich resigned last night as director of the festival chorus. His resignation came in the interval of Parsifal and the chorus demonstratively applauded him from the stage instead of taking their own applause.
We have asked for a statement from the Bayreuth Festival.
Friedrich, 66, has led the Bayreuth chorus since the summer of the year 2000. For the past three decadxes he has been in charge of the opera chorus at the state opera houses of Berlin and Hamburg.
Katharina Wagner has shrunk the chorus this summer to a pool of just 113 singers.
UPDATE: It’s been confirmed by festival spokesperson Hubertus Herrmann that Eberhard Friedrich, the long-time Chorus Master at Bayreuth Festival, has decided to step down. See here.
Bayreuth, as usual, turns a real-life drama into an admin process.
There are signs that Russia’s cultural isolation may be easing.
The Bolshoi has been invited to Serbia and Thailand next month.
Its new chief Valery Gergiev is pulling out all the stops to break out onto the world stage.
Robert Jindra has resigned as chief conductor of the Košice State Philharmonic, in Slovakia.
The Czech maestro had previously issued a blast at the country’s Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová for dismissing the heads of the country’s national theatre and national gallery. Jindra accused her of abuses of power.
The new government in Bratislava is hostile to democratic institutions and friendly towards the Putin regime in Russia.
In my next Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3, the conductor Sir Simon Rattle talks frankly about his often-turbulent 16 years at the head of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
“You try lots of things,” Rattle says, shrugging. “Eye contact doesn’t always work. And it’s difficult to keep your confidence. I certainly struggled at some times.’
… Rattle lasted 16 years at the wheel of the orchestral Porsche before he walked away again. “As a conductor in Berlin,” he explains, “it can be friendly, it can be polite, but you are not a member of the guild. They are the Mastersingers. They are the ones who remain. Conductors come and go.”
His successor, Kirill Petrenko, is an introvert who never gives interviews or makes recordings. Rattle is delighted. “They have a great conductor to work with who is totally uncompromising in areas where I compromised. Kirill never gives up, and I’m sure it drives them completely crazy, but he’s made them an orchestra that’s … much easier … for the rest of us to conduct.”…
Statement by the organisation representing most European opera houses, relating to the political crisis in Slovakia:
Opera Europa is deeply shocked and gravely concerned by the abrupt decision on August 6th by Slovakia’s culture minister, Martina Šimkovičová, to dismiss Matej Drlička as General Manager of the Slovenské národné divadlo Slovak National Theatre.
Matej Drlička has been a prominent advocate for the arts in Slovakia, passionately promoting Slovak works to broad audiences while fostering and nurturing the next generation of artists and audiences and gaining international recognition for his work.
This decision, alongside the dismissal of other cultural leaders, signals a troubling threat to artistic freedom in Slovakia. Article 13 of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) states that “The arts and scientific research shall be free of constraint.” Furthermore, the Council of Europe’s Manifesto on the Freedom of Expression of Arts and Culture in the Digital Era highlights that “Arts and culture emphasise, express, communicate, and anticipate the human reaction to social changes… Creativity and diverse cultural expressions, enabled and stimulated by artistic freedom of expression, are catalysts for sustainable development planning and policies.” Minister Šimkovičová’s political decisions clearly violate the European Union’s charter.
The widespread public backlash against this right-wing attack on #ArtisticFreedom, alongside the broader criticism of the Slovak government’s efforts to stifle dissenting voices, demonstrates that the official reason for Matej Drlička’s dismissal—claiming he “confused the position of general director of a national cultural institution with political activism and repeatedly brought politics into the activities of the SND”—is rejected by many Slovakians, European cultural institutions, politicians, and the media.
At Opera Europa, we also firmly reject the stated rationale for Matej Drlička’s dismissal. We stand by him in his fight against this instance of extreme right-wing cultural vandalism and urge the European Union to closely monitor developments in Slovakia and safeguard the independence and #FreedomOfExpression of cultural institutions across Europe.
Franz Liszt has been cancelled by the world’s orchestras, probably for something he said on social media. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a Liszt orchestral work on a concert programme, other than the two piano concertos? Probably not in the present century.
Yet Liszt was regarded in his lifetime and long after his death in 1886 as an orchestral composer of consequence, equal to Berlioz in colour, control and vivid imagination….
Fiddler on the Roof – Open Air Theatre in Regents Park
How wonderful to have Fiddler on the Roof back and, originally playing in Regents Park until September 21st has now been extended to the 28th. If you have never seen it – go. And if you have seen it, once or multiple times, you will go without any urging from me.
This 1964 musical with a perfect book by Joseph Stein and a perfect score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick is indestructible, not that anyone wants to destroy it. Every song is there for a reason whether of narrative, emotion, or character. Every single line, whether heartfelt, comic or declarative, belongs exactly where it is, said or sung by the right character, landing where the audience can appreciate the gift that is this great universal musical.
It’s about family, about how to hold to tradition in a constantly changing world, about how to withstand the buffeting of outside forces, about love. A father, Tevye, affectingly played here by Adam Dannheisser, talks to God about his troubles. He’s a milkman with five daughters, a perennially cross wife. and a lame horse, living in a village in rural Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The village, Anatevka, like many other Jewish settlements, is about to be destroyed by order of the Tsar. In a world where marriages are always decided by the father of the family, Tevye’s girls want to marry for love. What to do, God?
As specific as stories get, about an Orthodox Jewish community deep in the Pale, Fiddler on the Roof is for everyone, everywhere, who has ever had a family.
On a beautiful set by Tim Scutt, Jordan Fein’s production sings of lovingly reimagined verities and seems to fit into the Park’s bucolic atmosphere as if it had grown there organically. When the villagers are evicted from their homes by the pogrom, they disappear quietly into the darkness of the trees and wheatfield.
I could tell you about the songs, about the Fiddler, (splendid Raphael Papo), about Tevye’s wife Golde (Lara Pulver), who holds the family together, about the individual performances which collectively make this production work.
There’s a new production of Cole Porter’s great musical at the Barbican Theatre until Sept 14th. The casting is a bit odd. Who would ever have thought of bluff, Irish Adrian Dunbar r as a matinee idol who sings some of the most romantic songs ever written for the musical stage?
Nothing odd about the choice of his leading lady, though, Tony Award-winning Broadway royalty Stephanie J. Block. Here she is, in a garden somewhere, with this glorious romantic ballad, ‘So In Love‘ from Kiss me, Kate.
Just because.
