Category: music

Composer Julian Anderson and playwright Frank McGuiness have been selected to write an opera based on Sophocles’s Theban plays, with one act each devoted to Oedipus Rex, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus. The premiere is planned for 2013.

“Ms. Higdon, who still speaks with a lilting Southern accent, had almost no exposure to classical music growing up, but taught herself to play the flute at 15 and entered Bowling Green State University at 18 as a flute major. After catching up on theory classes she began composing at 21.”

“Many classical music lovers do what McNally has done: emphasize the stereotypes of the field in order to bring it across to others who have no idea how to approach this strange beast. This has the effect of pushing away exactly what they want to bring closer.”

Unlike its fall season, New York City Opera’s spring season wasn’t a “must-see affair,” but “over the course of the three stagings, there were signs that somebody has good artistic instincts.”

“Having appeared only once with the NJSO, and in two Metropolitan Opera productions, [Jacques] Lacombe is little known in this country. … What he does have, however, is a sterling reputation as a conductor. Like the Minnesota Orchestra’s Osmo Vänskä, he may be able to raise the quality and profile of the NJSO largely by reinvigorating the classics.”

As part of China’s efforts to strengthen business and diplomatic ties to Algeria, Chinese officials have signed an agreement to build a $43 million opera house on the outskirts of the Algerian capital. “Algerian Culture Minister Khalida Toumi says the building was designed in traditional Algerian style by Chinese engineers.”

The company’s education director, Jane Davidson, said that “her idea of staging work for six to 18-month-old babies was initially dismissed as madness, and that she was ‘slightly worried’ about their response. ‘I thought they’d just lie there screaming,’ she said. ‘But you’ve never seen such gigantic sets of eyes, they’re just completely fascinated by it’.”

“When it comes to the tuning of instruments, especially keyboards and fretted instruments, nature drops a giant hairball in our path. Here’s a short course on the arcana of tuning.”

“Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the New York Philharmonic have decided to extend their operating agreement to give both parties more time to resolve questions about a renovation of the orchestra’s home, Avery Fisher Hall.”

“Gelb has been running the company for more than three years, but this is the first full season he planned, paid for, and delivered–a rollout of eight new productions, culminating with Armida and laying out a program of modernization that is supposed to save the art form. … The strategy is fine, but its execution needs more muscle and judgment.”