Category: music

“Philadelphians sometimes need reminding by outsiders: Though they’re used to having the world’s largest pipe organ in the downtown Macy’s department store, virtually no similar establishment, possibly worldwide, has everyday organ concerts from Bach to Broadway raining down from the women’s lingerie department.” On Saturday, the Philadelphia Orchestra will give a concert with the store’s Wanamaker organ for “roughly 1,200 listeners seated on the main floor and two successive tiers – and paying $100 to $5,000 a ticket.”

“The Metropolitan Opera plans to introduce an online service providing video and audio recordings of its operas. The service, Met Player, is scheduled to begin on Oct. 22. It will allow users to hear 120 audio recordings and watch 50 full-length operas collected from the Met’s archives, with more to be added in subsequent months.”

The Juilliard School’s new graduate program in historical performance will begin next fall. “The artistic director will be Monica Huggett, an English violinist steeped in period performance. … Ms. Huggett had a hand in choosing the faculty, she said, and ‘about 50 percent are people I know and love.’ Several will also be familiar to early-music fans in New York.”

“It’s an open secret that Tony Hall, chief executive of the [Royal Opera House], and Howard Bernstein, CEO of Manchester city council, are talking about bringing Covent Garden to the city.”

Last Friday the newspaper banned classical music critic Donald Rosenberg from writing about the Cleveland Orchestra. Rosenberg had been critical of the orchestra. Its journalistic credibility in the balance, the newspaper refuses to comment. Susan Goldberg, the newspaper’s editor since June of 2007, would not comment on her decision to reassign Rosenberg, calling it “an internal personnel move…we never talk about this kind of thing.”

“When Levine began his tenure as music director in the fall of 2004, he made quick technical strides with the orchestra, and even more promisingly, his first year of programming was brilliant, daring, and full of intelligent risk-taking.” Now, not so much…

“A performance of the masterpiece, filmed at London’s Covent Garden earlier this month, will be put on the Royal Opera’s new site on 5 October… Archive material includes first night cast lists going back to 1946. The website also features trailers, interviews with artists and documentary footage.”

Why, starting his own festival, of course. The Castleton Festival will take place next summer on Maazel’s Virginia estate, with the maestro at center stage.

“If the term verismo in opera really does mean “realism” and “truth”, then [director Richard] Jones’s unflinching directness is long overdue… For once, the pay-off line – ‘The comedy is over” – is no laughing matter.”

The new agreement keeps 53 full-time musicians but cuts their pay (as well as administrative costs) and shortening the season.
Board president: “We can go to bed tonight relived that we have a symphony orchestra.”
Union official: “I don’t think there will be any parties tonight… This is not a win-win; it’s a survival issue at best.”