Category: music

It isn’t often that a production of a Mozart opera can inspire critics to foam at the mouth, and yet, the English National Opera managed it three years ago with Claixto Bieito’s mounting of Don Giovanni. “A crude, anti-musical farrago”, a “coke-fuelled fellatio fest”, and a “new nadir in the vulgar abuse of a masterpiece” were but a few of the barbs hurled ENO’s way. So what does a company do after such a spectacular critical failure? Bring it back for an encore, apparently, and the reviews (“I should sooner poke my eyes out and sell my children into slavery than sit though it again”) aren’t looking any better the second time around.

In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian immigrants descended upon Israel in droves, and no industry was more affected than that of classical music. Initially greeted with skepticism, Russian musicians quickly became the backbone of the Israeli orchestral scene, and swelled the ranks of the nation’s music schools as well. “The assimilation of the Russian musicians is now complete, but not for the better. Now the problem of classical music in Israel is their problem too, because the society turns its back on all musicians, and pushes them to the bottom rung of the ladder when it comes to priorities.”

“James Conlon, who stepped down in June as principal conductor of the Paris Opera, was hired Monday as music director of the Los Angeles Opera starting in July 2006.” Conlon succeeds Kent Nagano, whose contract runs through next spring. He will conduct as many as five productions per season, and intends to spend nearly half of each year in Los Angeles. The appointment has to be considered a major coup for L.A. Opera, which has been gaining prestige in recent years under the artistic leadership of Placido Domingo.

Former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard has been elected the new chairman of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Jacques Laurent. Bouchard inherits an organization in turmoil and on the verge of a musicians’ strike. The MSO has been in flux since the abrupt and angry resignation of music director Charles Dutoit nearly two years ago, although the recent appointment of Kent Nagano to succeed him had led to speculation that the orchestra was beginning to regroup.

The ongoing conflict between the musicians and management of the Montreal Symphony is intensifying, even as both sides continue contract talks. The dispute couldn’t be more basic: the musicians believe that they are grossly underpaid compared with comaprable North American orchestras, and the management insists that it simply cannot afford significant raises now or in the near future.

The music had not even subsided at the gala concert opening Scottish Opera’s new season last week when the company’s artistic director, Sir Richard Armstrong, mounted a furious challenge to the fiscal reorganization plan being forced on the Opera by the Scottish government. “Armstrong’s words suggested that the cuts forced by the Executive will, after the initial shock, be increasingly challenged… The structural underfunding which caused the gradual descent into debt has not been addressed, although clearly the hope is that there will be some future rectification.”

Music is probably not the first profession that springs to mind when one thinks of the problem of performance-enhancing drugs. And yet, the use of an anxiety-reducing drug called Inderal to get an increasing number of classical musicians through stressful auditions and solo performances is a hot-button issue in the industry. The drug is legal, non-habit-forming, and has no serious side effects, and yet, many musicians believe that using it amounts to a kind of cheating every bit as serious as an athlete’s use of steroids.

The Florida Orchestra is hoping that audiences in Tampa enjoy the music enough to attend concerts regardless of what night they’re held. “In a risky move, the orchestra has switched all 12 of its masterworks programs during the upcoming season in Tampa from Friday to Monday night. It is an attempt to bring some consistency to the orchestra’s schedule at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, where the preferred, 2,500-seat Morsani Hall isn’t always available to the orchestra because the center gives priority to lucrative Broadway tours and other presentations.”

The war of words between Milan’s La Scala and London’s Royal Opera House ratcheted up considerably over the weekend, with La Scala releasing a raft of correspondence which, it claims, show that conductor Riccardo Muti was not out of line in withdrawing from an ROH production. Meanwhile, the London house has announced that Antonio Pappano has agreed to cancel several U.S. engagements to replace Muti on the podium.

“Over the last four years the Silk Road Project has brought traditional music from distant countries and cultures — from countries along the old trade route between Italy and China — to Western audiences, performed by masters of ancient arts, instruments, and vocal techniques and by a floating ensemble of freelance virtuosos on Western instruments.” Now, a new series of workshops aims to “take the project to the next level by bringing a new generation of performers and composers into the process.”