Category: music

“Kids, it seems, like unlicensed services because they are free. But the report also acknowledges their usefulness in finding more obscure music and letting them listen to a band before they buy, so closing them down may actually make it harder for new artists to break through.”

“The plot of Pietro Mascagni’s tragic opera Cavalleria rusticana is ‘immoral’ and unsuitable for performances while the Sicilian city of Caltagirone holds its religious festival, the local church said on Wednesday.”

Scene: Norwich, England. “Disaster was imminent: The bride was due to arrive at any moment and the pianist called to say he wasn’t going to make it to the wedding in time.” (Stuck in London traffic.) So “the groom hit the panic button – with stupendous results.” It happened that Bramwell Tovey, the Vancouver Symphony’s music director, was on the way into town for a gig. He got a call from a colleague on the scene, drove right to the wedding hall, and …

“The Royal Conservatory of Music invited a handful of people yesterday to look at – and hear – the results of seven years of planning and construction behind Toronto’s newest cultural landmark…. People attending were instructed to not speak publicly about the quality of the sound, because construction is still not complete and because there wasn’t a real audience there to fill the room. But the initial impressions are so fine that it’s hard to not share the pleasure.”

“[E]ven those who supposedly love the art form, and who are involved in putting it on, are increasingly laboring under the delusion that it is inherently over-the-top, overblown, ridiculous, and, well, drivel.” According to this way of thinking, “opera has to have arias; opera has to have big emotions; therefore, we will have arias and ensembles, because they are the ingredients that make opera, even if it means stopping the action to tell the audience things that we already know.”

Confirming the second high-profile cancellation in as many days, the Metropolitan Opera said that, for “personal reasons,” the mercurial soprano has pulled out of six of her eight scheduled appearances as Carmen, including the New Year’s Eve gala and a worldwide high-def simulcast. “The production was conceived as a showcase for Ms. Gheorghiu and her husband, the tenor Roberto Alagna, who will still be singing Don José. It happens that the six performances Ms. Gheorghiu will miss are those in which Mr. Alagna was to have been her co-star.”

Saying she finds the discipline of full-scale opera “exhausting,” Dame Kiri will sing a cameo as the Duchess of Krakenthorp (usually a spoken comedy role) in Daughter of the Regiment at the Met next February, followed by final performances as Strauss’s Marschallin (a signature role) at the Cologne Opera in April. (She pointedly reminds us, however, that she is continuing her concert work.)

“Vibe, the hip-hop magazine that folded six weeks ago under a pile of debt, is being resurrected with a new spin – as a Web-focused publication with a greater emphasis on Vibe‘s roots. … The new owners say they plan to relaunch Vibe.com in the next few weeks. They intend to bring out the print edition only at the end of the year and then publish it quarterly rather than monthly, possibly increasing the frequency after 2010.”

Allan Kozinn: “I just don’t get the music toy thing. I play an actual guitar, and when I’ve wanted to play a Beatles song I either learned it by listening carefully to the record or, in recent years, I’ve consulted The Beatles Scores … The idea of picking up a plastic guitar-shaped thing … and pressing buttons while a bunch of colored dots scroll down against the backdrop of cartoon Beatles, just doesn’t do it for me.”

San Diego Opera general director Ian Campbell: “Price is the greatest obstacle to attendance at opera performances. … It is noticeable that whenever an opera company or orchestra offers inexpensive, subsidized seats to students, they are snapped up. If San Diego Opera had sufficient contributed income to offer all seats at, say, $10 each, we would never have to advertise.”