Opera is disappearing from American television. “The prospect is not a pretty one for full-length opera on PBS. Shadowed by ever-diminishing ratings, opera telecasts are being chased even from the not-for-profit airwaves. This coming season, the most familiar, and once constant, ‘content providers’ – the Metropolitan and New York City Operas, respectively – find their programming plans in disarray. After twenty-five years of televising three to four operas a year, the Met has only one scheduled for 2002-2003.”
Category: music
One Work Wonder
Gilbert Kaplan is a former economist who conducts one symphony. Ane he does it very well. His second career “has to be one of the strangest acts of wish fulfillment in musical history, not quite on a par in historical importance with Gustav Mahler’s becoming conductor of the Vienna State Opera in 1897, but possessing its own odd grandeur. Mr. Kaplan is doing what he regards as the definitive “Resurrection” Symphony with the orchestra that Mahler conducted when the work was first performed 108 years ago. But the Vienna Philharmonic is one of about 50 orchestras that Mr. Kaplan, who is not a professional musician, has conducted in the Mahler Second Symphony.”
Big Decline In UK Recordings Sales
Sales of recordings are way down in the UK. “Figures out this week will show sales of CDs and other recorded music were down almost 4% last year, says the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). It is understood the figures will reveal the biggest downturn in a single year since the birth of the CD market in the early 1980s.”
Recording Industry Contracting Warn Industry Analysts
Stock analysts are warning that the recording business is a fading one. “We believe the structural issue of piracy and weak pricing power will continue, and predict that the industry will continue to contract through 2006.”
Minority Report – Competition Tries To Encourage Young Musicians
Blacks and Latinos make up just 3 percent of the musicians in American orchestras. And though some attempts have been made to try to help diversify, the number of minority classical musicians is still small. So in Detroit, “for six years, the Sphinx Competition for young minority string players has been on the front lines of rewriting the odds. Prizes include more than $100,000 in cash and scholarships to top summer music camps. Winners also receive recital opportunities and solo appearances with major orchestras…”
Pop Criticism, Served Fresh Daily
How do you stay fresh if you’re a popular music critic? NYT critic Ben Ratliff says it’s the most difficult thing: “The real challenge of the job – and particularly in writing for a daily – is to keep in motion, always putting more distance between you and what you thought was cool when you were in your early 20s. (You can always admire the old favourites again, but carefully: you must meet them on new ground, as a more developed person.) You have to keep going against assumptions, especially your own. Hipness is a disease, it really is. It freezes thought.”
English National Opera Chooses New Director
English National Opera has chosen Sean Doran – currently heading the Perth Arts Festival in Australia – as the beleaguered company’s new artistic director. It will be a tough job. “By the time he arrives in April, the result of the strike ballot among the 68 members of the chorus, faced with one in three redundancies to reduce the company’s deficit, will be known, and the Musicians’ Union will have decided whether to initiate grievance procedures over the treatment of the orchestra.”
How About A Seat Sale?
UK business leaders came to talk to orchestra managers this week about ways to market and sell tickets. One idea, popular in the airline business, is “yield management”, where “tickets become more expensive as departure dates approach. Concert-goers who book their tickets well in advance might pay £10 for the best seat while those who turn up at the box office on the day could pay up to £30.”
Classic Music At Fire Sale Prices
Prices for classical recordings have never been better. “Several factors have brought prices to this nadir. Contrary to any number of reports, the classical recording industry isn’t dying. But it’s definitely contracting. Far fewer new recordings are being made, so to keep market share, major labels are reissuing older titles when they aren’t even old.” Some of the deals n classic recordings are amazing…
San Francisco Opera’s New Tune – A Good One
No one likes cutting back, but San Francsico Opera is making the right move in scaling back its budget for the next few seasons. “The courageous decision by General Director Pamela Rosenberg and the board to finally get real about the company’s perennial financial difficulties represents that classic first step in the breaking of any bad habit – admitting you have a problem.”