Category: music

Ana María Martínez’s feet “became entangled in some of the stage props and she struggled to stay upright before falling backwards into the orchestra’s string section. Two medics came forward to help her after Glyndebourne’s management put out a call for any doctors in the theatre.”

“A child bounces a ball; a family sits down for a meal; a parcel is delivered; a woman tries on her wedding dress … welcome to Herbert Wernicke’s vision of Bach as kitchen-sink drama.” In his music-theatre program “Actus Tragicus” (now being revived in Edinburgh), the late director presents a giant doll’s house in which “both chorus members and soloists go about their lovingly detailed, humdrum existence” as they perform half a dozen Bach cantatas.

“When Beethoven wrote his heaven-storming Ninth Symphony he cannot have imagined that the Ode to Joy would one day be played by an ensemble of 1,000 ukuleles. The attempt at the Albert Hall on Tuesday night was as sublime as it was ridiculous. … So full was the sold-out hall that room could not be found for the people who would count the number of players.”

“Chinese culture officials point out that older Chinese were all raised on the Red Classics, and that the genre is closer to Western Opera than other traditional Chinese opera, such as Peking Opera, which include elements of acrobatics and martial arts. … Whatever people may think of the Red Classics, for now at least, China’s government is promoting them as the country’s official contribution to the body of world opera.”

“Riccardo Muti has agreed to lead Rome’s opera house as the Italian capital tries to raise its music profile in a country where Milan’s La Scala dominates the field, the city’s mayor said.” The maestro, who begins a five-year term as the Chicago Symphony’s music director in 2010, ended a two-decade tenure at La Scala in 2005 following a series of ferocious disputes.

“Security forces in Azerbaijan have launched a campaign against dozens of citizens for voting for the wrong entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Authorities in the oil-rich country are apparently tracking down people who voted for Azerbaijan’s bitter enemy Armenia in the competition held in May.”

A weeklong Tanglewood festival celebrating James Taylor has been a boon to the Boston Symphony’s bottom line, and not just because tickets flew out the door. “Instead of being paid for the gig, Taylor will give the symphony $500,000, his earnings after expenses.” Taylor and “his wife, Kim, [who] was a longtime [BSO] staffer and has now been elected to serve as a trustee,” have donated more than $1 million to the BSO in the past few years.

“The Berlin Philharmonic (aka the Berliner Philharmoniker, aka the world’s greatest orchestra) will launch its first full season of live webcasts on August 28 with Simon Rattle conducting,” and “the Berliner’s Digital Concert Hall” is “terrific: a high-definition image (Flash H.264 encoding), exceptional sound quality (data transfer rate of up to 320 kbit/s, close to CD quality) and even good camera work (remote controlled).” High quality is pretty much required, however, because the webcasts aren’t free.

“[T]he Estonian-born music director emeritus of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra” and conductor laureate of the New Jersey Symphony “is returning to his hometown of Tallinn to become the music director of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble that launched his career nearly 50 years ago.”

“Unpublished scores by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) were found at the Rio de Janeiro School of Music library, according to the school’s director. … [T]he handwritten scores were dated 1921.”