Category: music

Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya has denounced a new Bolshoi production of Yevgeny Onegin. “To the end of my days I will not escape my shame at participating in that public desecration of our sacred national treasure,” she told the Bolshoi’s management in a letter. Ms Vishnevskaya’s spokesman confirmed she had called off plans for an 80th birthday party at the Bolshoi in protest at the opera’s “completely deformed” main characters.

Nashville’s imposing new Schermerhorn Symphony Center opened this weekend with a gala celebration that some observers called the biggest party the city had seen in a decade. The opening night concert, conducted by Leonard Slatkin, had a distinct Nashville flavor, with standard works by Barber, Mahler and Shostakovich sandwiching a new triple concerto by country/jazz/folk legends Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer.

Minneapolis/St. Paul is the only metropolitan area in the US to support two major orchestras – the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra – and over the years, the Twin Cities have earned a reputation for adventurous audiences and daring programming. But Michael Anthony says that reputation is increasingly at odds with reality, as both orchestras stack their seasons with Beethoven, Brahms, and little else, “a reflection of economics, of orchestra boards and marketing departments running scared, hoping to avoid deficits and sustain their graying audience by programming the same old works they think the audience wants to hear.”

Pity the poor music critics whenever Andrea Bocelli is performing. Bocelli is as big a star as the classical music world has at present, and his fans are utterly devoted and will not hear a word said against him. So given all that, is it just bad form for critics to point out that, by any objective standard, Bocelli just isn’t a very good singer?

Toronto’s new opera house is off to a successful start, garnering positive reviews from critics and audiences alike. And while the new building isn’t going to win any daring architecture awards, its place in the city seems to fit with the mindset of its resident company. “Operagoers in Toronto are an adventurous lot, as befits a city where forty-nine percent of the population (as of 2001) was born outside of Canada. From its beginnings, [the Canadian Opera Company’s] artistic directors have made a point of programming works outside the standard nineteenth-century Italian, French and German repertoire.”

Orange County, California’s Pacific Symphony is moving into an ambitious new concert hall desigtned for it. “The new hall puts the Pacific Symphony on equal footing with the great orchestras of the world. We are definitely in the big leagues now.”

Jazz at Lincoln Center is throwing a John Coltrane party this season. “So let’s approach Jazz at Lincoln Center’s opening concerts of the new season, a series of shows based on the music of John Coltrane on the 80th anniversary of his birth, as beginner classes,” writes Ben Ratliff.

London’s English National Opera debuted its opera about Muammar Gaddafi Thursday night. “But fans of conventional opera rich in arias and romantic duets faced in ‘Gaddafi: A Living Myth’ a bewildering mix of musical styles and critics complained it contained precious little rap and no opera.”

The Last Night at the Proms is a cliche chockablock full of traditions that everyone complains about. So how would you fix it? The Guardian takes a survey…

Three new concert halls open this fall – in Nashville, Miami, and Costa Mesa, California. “Clearly, the live-performance hall game is a tricky one, especially when many companies struggle. From what can be seen in their near-complete state, the three new structures don’t grab the passerby by the collar. Yet in spite of their lack of drama, they still may have the capacity to play a larger-than-life role in their communities because of what happens inside.”