Category: music

“Plans for a £100 million outpost of the Royal Opera House in the North West suffered a potentially serious setback yesterday when one of Manchester’s leading arts complexes said a new opera house in the city would ‘destroy’ it. Rod Aldridge, chairman of the trustees at The Lowry, said that the proposed venture would be ‘bad for the city, bad for the arts and bad for the taxpayer’.”

“Officials of the Skylight Opera Theatre came to the Journal Sentinel Wednesday, to comment on the company’s financial condition and the hotly controversial firing of artistic director Bill Theisen and other[s] last week. Much more to come on this,” but one thing they said was that “[n]o one dreamed, when [managing director Eric Dillner] was hired a little over a year ago, that he would take on the duties of artistic director.”

It’s up to New York City Opera’s new general manager, George Steel, to hoist the troubled company out of the ditch. “Given the extreme limitations under which City Opera is now operating, the choices Mr. Steel made in creating this tiny, last-minute season demonstrate a positive strategic spin…. It’s a more sensible course than [Gerard] Mortier’s wholesale reinvention.”

“This is the tale of two city operas, both of which present high art at popular prices. That innate contradiction has landed them in trouble, but where English National Opera in London has turned around its fortunes in the past year to enjoy acclaim, New York City Opera faces a rump season that may be its last. Yet such is City Opera’s insularity these days that it seems to have learned nothing from ENO’s near collapse. Let’s see if we can help.”

“The Boston Symphony Orchestra confirmed today that 10 employees are being laid off, from departments including development and public relations. … The layoffs follow a staff hiring freeze instituted in December 2008 and the cancellation in April of a European tour the BSO had scheduled for 2010.”

The company’s version of Wagner’s tetralogy, which has been touring the world for several years, has had no credited stage director; critics far and wide have made note of a certain dramatic slackness in the performances, while reaction to George Tsypin’s designs has ranged from “magical” to “outlandish” to “pretty funky.” But “it will be different in¬London [this summer], promises Gergiev. He has enlisted the young Anglo-Russian theatre director, Alexander Zeldin, to re-direct the existing production – the word being used is ‘re-imagining’ – so the version we see will be tighter and fresher.”

“It’s not curtains after all for the Utah Festival Opera Company, according to founder Michael Ballam. Following a 6-1 vote by the Cache County Council to approve a ‘heroic’ $150,000 stimulus to save the company from financial ruin, Ballam told a reporter Tuesday that the 17-year-old company will be alive in 2010.”

“Barrett Wissman, a businessman who in April pleaded guilty to securities fraud in an investigation into corruption at the New York State pension fund, has stepped down as chairman of IMG Artists, one of the largest firms representing classical musicians, and has been replaced by Charles Hamlen.”

“Researchers analyzing how listening to classical music affected the study’s participants found that songs that alternate between fast and slow sections – like opera – induced dynamic and somewhat predictable change in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems of the volunteers.”