Category: music

Robert Everett-Green isn’t ready yet to pronounce on the acoustics of Toronto’s new Opera House: “I’ve been in the hall four times (five, if you count a hard-hat tour) and heard music from six different seats on three levels. It has been a steep learning experience so far, and I’m not just talking about the stairs up to the fifth ring. One thing I’m sure of is that it’s mighty interesting to have a new opera house on the block.”

“A door has not exactly been slammed shut. But the Barenboim years in the Windy City were not marked by a mutual affection that might have left both sides with a more enduring relationship. Barenboim’s departure, made public two years ago, came by mutual consent: he, frustrated at having to combine musical stewardship with the glad-handing of potential donors; they unsure of his commitment to audience-building at a time of falling subscriptions.”

The Arizona Youth Symphony is shutting down after only six seasons. Its founder cites the establishment of the new Mesa Youth Symphony Orchestra as the cause. “Wal-Mart moved in next door to TrueValue; that’s basically what happened,” he said. “We’ve had such good seasons, the idea of not being able to be as good as I was, I thought I’d better not. That’s why I didn’t.”

The French National Assembly voted in March to “force companies like Apple Computer to make their online music stores and players compatible with rival products, but key members say they have agreed to many of the weaker measures endorsed by senators.”

“Barenboim may have taken his leave of America’s finest orchestra – and what a farewell it was, the towering ninth symphonies of Mahler, Bruckner and Beethoven on successive evenings – but the future offers endless possibilities. An important chapter in his life has now closed, and yet, at 64, no great age for a conductor, one senses that his race has some way to run.”

“The still slightly unformed nature of American opera is reflected in the startling diversity of opinions surrounding it. Experts cannot even agree on exactly how to define the field.”

Oundjian is also music director of the Toronto Symphony. In detroit “Oundjian will focus on artistic planning, helping select repertoire, shaping upcoming seasons and devising special initiatives such as festivals or other ventures. Oundjian (UN-jen), who was previously engaged to conduct two weeks in Detroit next season, will lead three weeks in 2007-08. The move promises to deepen the scope and ambition of DSO classical programming, which in the eyes of some aficionados and DSO players has lacked imagination during the transition after former music director Neeme Jarvi stepped down in 2005.”

Hungarian minister of culture István Hiller has fired Árpád Jutocsa Hegyi, the controversial general director of the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest, Italy’s ANSA news agency reports.

“The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has launched an online poll asking users of its website to vote for one of five choices. The contenders are Highland Cathedral, Flower of Scotland, Scots Wha Hae, Scotland the brave and A man’s a man. The anthem debate has been stoked by different sports playing different songs before Scotland matches.”

“The rush of time drives ‘Angels in America’ — first as Tony Kushner’s gargantuan Broadway play about AIDS, politics and morality, and now in an operatic setting by Peter Eotvos. Written for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and produced for an American audience by Opera Unlimited at the Calderwood Pavilion here on Friday night, “Angels” as opera thrives on characters who — in their varying pettiness, nobility, cowardice, heart and sheer size of personality — were operatic before there was music to make them so.”