Category: music

To save a historic opera theatre in Beijing, a movie theatre company plans to create a dual-prupose building that will stage opera and show movies. The movie theater is much more meaningful if we preserve the opera at the same time, making both economically sound,”

“Investment in violins gives a long-term return after inflation of around 3-4 percent. Its researchers also found that while the overall return for violins is often lower than for other assets, it tends to improve when stocks and bonds are weak, and vice versa.”

“A Christian group has lost its High Court battle to prosecute the BBC’s director general over the screening of Jerry Springer – The Opera, in 2005… Two judges ruled that broadcasters and theatres staging live productions could not be prosecuted for blasphemy.”

It’s been a full year since David Gockley stepped into the general directorship of San Francisco Opera, with big ideas and endless ambitions for the company. His first season has been “an unpredictable mixture of impressive successes and odd disappointments.”

Seattle Opera has contracted with the city to lease empty Mercer Arena, next door to McCaw Hall, where the opera performs. The Arena will be converted into offices and costume and scene shops, and will allow the company to consolidate its operations. The city will get out from under an expensive and unused venue, and even make some money on the deal.

“Pop music can be sold by even the most uncooperative dolt. Classical music, meanwhile, should be the domain of experts. Mercifully, the internet is eradicating from the planet this unique retail model in which the vendor, knowing insultingly little about the product, dictates the terms of the transaction.”

“The low-profile success of MP3 blogs, and the apparent unconcern of the music industry, is in stark contrast to the aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America in other spheres.”

“More than 100,000 jazz recordings tracing the history of the art form — from swing to the avant-garde — will be donated to Oberlin Conservatory of Music, in Oberlin, Ohio, by Chicagoans James and Susan Neumann.”

A single page of a Mozart manuscript has sold for a record £110,900 at auction. “The folio, from the composer’s draft for the Sinfonia Concertante, has set a new record for a single page of his work, which has stood since 1998.”

No musical director has been named in Muti’s place. Rather, Daniel Barenboim is chief among the guest conductors, including Daniele Gatti and Riccardo Chailly. The position is deliberately hazy, with Barenboim carrying the informal honorific title “Maestro of La Scala.”