Category: music

“South Africa’s Cape Town Opera has turned down an appeal from Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to call off a tour of Israel.”

The Canadian Opera Company continued to pack houses in its 2009-10 season, earning $13.4 million at the box office, a 6.2 per cent increase. … The full season of seven operas averaged 97.6 per cent attendance, with 137,000 people flocking to mainstage performances at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.”

Late in September, the Georgian culture ministry abruptly called off two widely publicized concerts, scheduled for mid-October, by the New York Philharmonic. (Enraged Philharmonic officials publicly insulted their would-be hosts when the news arrived.) Now a Georgian promoter explains what went wrong.

“Up to 20 jobs could go at the Sydney Opera House as the landmark building strives to save $2 million and reposition itself in a rapidly changing performing arts environment.”

“On Sunday, it was the depiction of a sexually aroused, anatomically correct male donkey and references to capital punishment that nearly derailed an ambitious interpretation of the Handel opera Semele” imported from Brussels for the Beijing Music Festival.

“For a city that has taken a lot of licks, the symphony orchestra strike has drawn strong opinions on all sides. The Detroit News, for one, has editorialized that musicians should accept cuts in a city where median income fell 21.3% between 2000 and 2009. But the orchestra has drawn support too…”

“For a quarter-century, defining that mission fell to Jorge Mester, who quit as the orchestra’s music director last June after a contract dispute. With Mester gone and the orchestra nowhere near replacing him, someone needed to minister to the ensemble’s artistic needs, even if only temporarily.”

“In Sydney, senior players earn $121,000 compared with $75,000 for the equivalent role in Adelaide. The wage disparity in Adelaide is even more distinct at the Tasmanian, Queensland and WA symphony orchestras. But the problem is tickets to symphony orchestras nationwide are already subsidised to the tune of $137 each, so the ASO players’ demands are finding few fans beyond the Adelaide Hills.”

It’s true: There’s an app for pretty much everything. In this case, the app is Music Theory Pro, which combines aspects of music theory with ear training in an easy-to-use format.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, the association made good on its intention of balancing the operating budget and reported a modest surplus of $41,000 on an operating budget of $61.6 million.