Category: music

“Washington National Opera will present a live simulcast of a matinee performance of Puccini’s La Boheme to at least 16 colleges, universities and high schools across the nation Sept. 23. The troupe will also present its free simulcast to the Mall… The simulcast will be offered to the schools free of charge, with the cost — about $15,000 per institution — borne by WNO trustees.”

“In his five years with the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle has grappled with conservative critics and the language barrier… What he is attempting is to have it both ways: to open Berlin up as an orchestra in terms of its repertoire and its relationship with the city, and develop the ensemble as the definitive orchestra in the core German tradition. It’s not something you can do in five years, or even 10: it’s a project that could last Rattle the rest of his musical life.”

Classical music’s constantly predicted death may be limited to the baby boom generation, if radio listening numbers coming out of the UK are to be believed. According to reports, Classic FM is seeing large numbers of kids under 15 tuning to their station.

“Italian conductor Riccardo Muti is to launch a season of summer festivals in Lebanon that were scrapped last year because of the Israel-Hezbollah war… Last year, all four festivals were cancelled after Israel launched on July 12 a massive military offensive. The Israeli onslaught destroyed much of Lebanon’s infrastructure and sent foreigners fleeing from the country which had been expecting a record year in tourism revenues.”

“Would English National Opera have commissioned a work like the benighted Gaddafi had not the woolly notion of opening up opera to the untapped younger audience seemed such a politically expedient idea to embrace? And would the Proms before the Blair years ever have dreamt of including an evening with Michael Ball in its season? Those are the negatives, driven by the wholly false idea that popular art must by definition be good art….”

A fight broke out this week at a Boston Pops concert. No, seriously. “The fight, caught on camera by several local television stations, showed what appeared to be several females surrounding a man who was wildly swinging. One man’s shirt was ripped off of him.”

“The seedlings of pseudo-classicalism are scattering at bewildering speed. It’s the way that ‘rock’ has become sealed into its own historical bubble. Just as classical music can look back on its trajectory from Renaissance music to Serialism and assess its great composers and timeless masterpieces, so rock can point to its canon of superstars (now all festooned with Grammys and ennobled in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) and its acknowledged archive of classic albums, and ask: ‘Is that it’?”

“Only a churl would now deny that iTunes covers the classical waterfront every bit as effectively as a terrestrial store, and for no more than the price of a CD, with regular special offers. What effect this will have on classical reception in the years ahead is one of the great conundra.”

London’s Royal Opera House has announced a £10m donation, one of the largest in the venue’s history, from the foundation of deceased philanthropist Paul Hamlyn. Part of the gift will be used to establish a permanent educational activity endowment, and the ROH’s Floral Hall will be renamed for Hamlyn.

The Indianapolis Symphony has found a new concertmaster after 15 months of searching. At only 27 years old, Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Zachary De Pue will be one of the youngest (if not the youngest) concertmasters of an upper-tier American orchestra.