Category: music

The gramophone era’s first female opera star made her first recordings in 1904, and the original metal masters (electroplated from the wax cylinders engraved by the machine into which she sang) have been rediscovered, stashed away deep in the Deutsche Grammophon archives. “Many were buckled and distorted, but modern techniques allow them to be restored to near-pristine condition. There’s no digital enhancing. Melba sings exactly as she would have done in her drawing room 104 years ago.”

“For the third fiscal year in a row, a Bridge Fund comprising special contributions has patched what would have been a significant hole in the [Cleveland Orchestra’s] budget. […] The Bridge Fund was a $17 million pot created in 2004-05 for the purpose of covering future deficits. It is one piece of a long-term ‘turnaround’ plan enacted that year by trustees and community leaders to stabilize the orchestra’s books… According to the plan, the orchestra aims to balance its books without the fund beginning in 2010.”

“The 73-year-old actress is succeeding Walter Cronkite as anchor of the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day concert on PBS. Cronkite had been the narrator of the Great Performances telecast in the United States for the past 24 years. ‘He is passing the baton this year and staying home with his family, and they asked me if I would do this special 25th anniversary program,’ Andrews said Wednesday during a telephone interview from Los Angeles.”

And what will our bloggers Greg Sandow and Amanda Ameer make of this? “Combining condensed versions of libretti with anime & manga, Vancouver Opera has created a slick promotional and education tool, the perfect elixir to sway the under 30-something prospective opera fans, and elucidate opera’s timeless tales as a sweet chaser.” The online manga include (so far), Eugene Onegin, La Bohème, Fidelio, Cavelleria Rusticana, L’italiana in Algeri, Pagliacci, and Tosca.

“The Virginia Symphony Orchestra, which has a $1.5 million debt, is cutting employee salaries by 20 percent and canceling some spring concerts. A reduction in single ticket sales and insufficient donations are largely responsible for the debt, accrued since the fall of 2007.” (Musicians’ pay will not be affected.)

“There are 30 seconds of perfectly groomed young women in the back-arching, pupils-dilating throes of carnal abandon – either in flagrante delicto with a partner, or in the bath, or pressed against a window, that sort of thing” in the current UK television ad for a Durex feminine lubricant. The accompanying music is “Der Hölle rache,” the Queen of the Night’s stratospheric vengeance aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute.

Brett Dean, one of Australia’s most admired composers (and a formidable violist as well), receives the $200,000 prize for his violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing, co-commissioned by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the Cologne Philharmonie and premiered in the US by the Boston Symphony.

Last year composer Yotam Haber was nosing around some archives in Rome when he found some historic recordings of cantors from Roman synagogues, which maintained a distinct chant style through the centuries. He has incorporated some of those recordings in his new score, death will come and she shall have your eyes.

This tumultuous spring at OA has seen music director Richard Hickox accused by some of nepotism and declining artistic standards, stoutly defended by others, and killed last month by a burst aorta. Now the company’s chairman, Gordon Fell, is stepping down, to be replaced by scientist and former telecom executive Ziggy Switkowski. The company says that Fell’s departure had been planned for some time.

“After waiting on the sidelines as other orchestras leapt online, the Boston Symphony Orchestra launched a download service yesterday that will allow customers to buy new and historical recordings through the organization’s website, www.bso.org.”