Category: music

The Metroploitan Opera is cutting the price of its cheapest tickets to $15. “The Met faces a box office shortfall of approximately $4 million this season as opera finds its harder to compete with other forms of entertainment. The Met’s new general manager, Peter Gelb, unveiled his strategy on Monday, and promised to maintain the venerable institution’s reputation for quality while broadening opera’s appeal.”

James Levine, “whose current contract as music director runs through the 2010-11 season, said Monday he will stay at least two additional seasons for a new staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which will be the centerpiece of the Met’s 2013 celebration marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth.”

Here’s a graphic that connects the dots from artist to producer to consumer…

Last week’s Grammy award for best Hawaiian album has provoked controversy. “No sooner had the award been announced, Hawaiian discussion boards, phone lines and radio shows began buzzing with the controversy: Slack key may be a Hawaiian art form, but it has won both years, and will most likely keep winning precisely because it is the Hawaiian style with which most non-Hawaiians — and most Grammy voters — are most familiar.”

When Wu Han and David Finckel took over the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, they faced a programming challenge. The Society has traditionally performed all of the Brandenburg Concertos on a single program each year. But should the tradition continue? “Half of the board members told me, ‘If you cancel the “Brandenburgs,” I’m not supporting you.’ The other half said, ‘If I hear another six “Brandenburg” concertos, I’m going to go crazy’.”

The City of Seattle is replacing its generic Muzak with recordings by local musicians. Anyone calling City Hall will be serenaded by locally-produced music while they’re on hold. “The program is a great way to support local artists and expose more people to the incredible diversity of music this city has to offer.”

Peter Gelb has big changes in mind for the Metropolitan Opera, and the opera world is interested. “He said he would emphasize directors with theater and film backgrounds, embrace digital delivery of opera, bring in conductors like Riccardo Muti who have never conducted at the Met before and introduce major voices in new roles, like Karita Mattila as Tosca. Mr. Gelb will also establish a joint commissioning program with the Lincoln Center Theater, which would solicit works from musical theater composers as well as from more traditional classical composers. He will increase the number of new productions from about four a season to seven.”

What do Peter Gelb’s plans for the new Met mean? “If Mr. Gelb wants to connect the Met to contemporary culture, then he must make the company something it has not been: a place that cultivates living composers. He has big plans here as well, though one program will indeed raise the specter of crossover opera to his doubters.”

The Boston Symphony is playing an all-Schoenberg program this week. “The Schoenberg programming has had a polarizing effect, pitting the traditionalists, who would prefer their Beethoven served with a dose of Mozart, against the modernists, a group made up of musicians, students, critics, and subscribers who say they’re inspired by Levine’s commitment to a composer who, while long respected, has never been a hot ticket.”

One day in 1967, David Margetts’ Stradivarius was stolen from his car. Some time late a woman found it on the side of a freeway in Los Angeles. It took 27 years before the instrument surfaced again…