Category: music

“Milan’s La Scala opera house and a union representing about half of its orchestra agreed on a new contract, averting an additional strike that threatened the Dec. 7 gala opening night of Verdi’s ‘Don Carlo.'”

“David Koch is funding a renovation of New York City Opera’s home, and that’s enough. His $100 million donation will transform the New York State Theater–home to City Opera and New York City Ballet–into the David H. Koch Theater, and he feels bad about the opera’s financial and administrative mess. But he isn’t planning to bail it out.”

“Traditionally, auditioning for an orchestra means appearing alone onstage in a nerve-jangling performance before grizzled veteran musicians. In the Google way, it means posting on the company’s video-sharing site, YouTube, for online judging by the professionals and then, ultimately, the YouTube universe.” Winners of Google’s YouTube Symphony Orchestra project, announced Monday, will play at Carnegie Hall.

“Richard Wagner and his works will remain a sensitive topic in Israel for many years, the Israeli Opera’s new musical director, conductor David Stern, told reporters yesterday. ‘I don’t think it’s such a great loss to Israeli audiences. I still conduct Wagner in other places around the world, but there are many other things that are worthwhile to conduct here.'”

“[I]t was no surprise that he received a prolonged ovation when he first appeared in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night to conduct Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in his long-overdue debut with the company. The ovation was greater and richly deserved five hours later, when Mr. Barenboim took his solo bow onstage. Though his performance of this challenging masterpiece was rhapsodic and impassioned, it was also keenly sensitive to the score’s harmonic shifts and architectonic structure. The Met orchestra played splendidly for him, and somehow he altered its sheen and color, making it sound duskier and warmer.”

Some observers were mightily relieved when Seiji Ozawa finally stepped down from the Boston Symphony’s music directorship in 2002. But he got a mightily warm welcome from the audience when he returned to Symphony Hall this week. And that was just when he came onstage.

“Quite a bit about the concept of bel canto has long been open to interpretation, including the meaning of this loose term itself, which literally translates as beautiful singing… Opera buffs today use the term bel canto all the time. Yet we each seem to bring a different set of assumptions to the concept.”

Much has been made of Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s refusal to conduct the Boston Symphony last week after discovering that his name was in small print on a poster. But Jeremy Eichler says that the BSO has “a deeper problem of… condescending to a potential audience. If the BSO had the artistic vision to bring Rozhdestvensky to its stage, it should have had the marketing courage to stand behind its reasons for doing so.”

Classical music organizations are frequently happy to let the music speak for itself, providing little or no contextual information for audiences. Andrew Adler says that approach is a mistake. “Consider how much more could have been accomplished… All it takes is a little planning and, yes, imagination.”

“The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra pulled off an impressive financial performance in its latest fiscal year, overcoming economic uncertainty to increase ticket sales and donations. But the orchestra’s small operating loss–$293,000 on $26.8 million in revenue–belies a much larger challenge: Symphony officials acknowledge their endowment is nowhere near large enough to support the city’s largest performing arts organization in the long term.”