Category: music

In the next six months in London there are only eight premieres by British composers. “That’s eight out of roughly 500 works being performed by the country’s symphony orchestras until the end of the season (not including repeat performances on tour). A minuscule proportion – about 1.6% of performed works, if you want to be pedantic about it. Why is new work so thinly represented? Largely, it is because orchestras are reluctant to take risks. Programming new work is expensive. You have to pay the composer…”

What’s the cause of the financial problems at San Francisco Opera and the resulting change in the way the company does business? Janos Gereben has done a little digging, and offers a list of contributing factors.

Last year Salvatore Licitra was hailed as the world’s next great tenor when he substituted for Pavarotti at the Metropolitan Opera. Was it all just hype? No, writes Charles Michener – he’s the real thing. “Listening to Mr. Licitra, I thought of something that one of Renée Fleming’s teachers, Arleen Auger, said to the soprano when she was just starting out: ‘Imagine the different registers of your voice as a series of hotel floors, each with its own character.’ Mr. Licitra navigated the ascent to each floor with seamless ease, finding new colors in each room and demonstrating the peculiarly Italian gift of expansiveness that gives a sense of vistas opening up.

California-born conductor Kent Nagano is rumored to be the choice of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to be its next music director, and, conveniently enough, Nagano is in town to conduct the MSO this week. And while the orchestra may have a long way to go to rebuild its damaged relationship with its audiences following the stormy departure of Charles Dutoit last year, early indications are that Nagano is an overwhelming favorite with public and press alike.

For years, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has produced large-scale choral works with the assistance of a polished adult choir based in nearby Ann Arbor, Michigan. This year, however, that choir is absent from the DSO’s schedule, and, in an apparent cost-cutting move, the orchestra is putting on performances of Mozart’s Requiem with a 60-voice student chorus from a state university. The result, says critic Lawrence Johnson, is embarrassingly bad, and an insult to the DSO’s audiences, which pay good money to hear professional-caliber performances.

Calgary’s city council is not doing much to dispel the popular notion that the city is an uncultured cowboy town. Less than a week after trying to renege on a $250,000 contribution to the bankrupt Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra because of a technicality, aldermen opposed to the bailout are pushing a plan that would force the CPO to repay the entire amount to the city if the ensemble eventually makes it back out of bankruptcy. One alderman called the proposal “a win-win-win situation.” Orchestra officials presumably call it something else.

“Music impresario Raymond Gubbay has attacked plans to axe jobs in the chorus and orchestra at the English National Opera. Mr Gubbay – one of the leading names in his field – described as ‘absurd’ and ‘ridiculous’ the ENO’s proposals to reduce the number of 60 choristers and 83 orchestra members. His outburst followed chairman Martin Smith’s admission the ENO had been saved from going into receivership by a £4.2m grant from the Arts Council of England.”

So you think it’s hard to listen to a 6-hour Wagner opera? Try playing violin in the orchestra pit, your arms and head twisted into a pretzel for the duration of a performance three times the length of the average concert. The health risks are so severe, in fact, that one German opera orchestra has gone out and raised the money necessary to provide its musicians with physiotherapy and muscle training. Some musicians are reported to have increased their muscle strength by 280%.

The musicians of the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra, locked in a months-long battle with their management over the decision to file for bankruptcy and demand heavy monetary concessions from the players, have formed the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, which they say will be kept in standby mode, ready to spring from the ashes should the CSSO fold. In the short term, both sides are waiting to see what will occur this weekend, when Ray Charles is scheduled to perform on a CSSO pops series. Charles is an avowed union member, and the musicians have placed the CSSO on the music union’s “Unfair List.” CSSO management is counting on Charles for significant ticket revenue.

Beginning in 2005, the company will cut its season from 88 performances of 11 or 12 productions to about 65 performances a year spread over nine productions. “The goal is to shrink the annual operating budget from around $60 million to $45 million. The Opera had a deficit of $7.6 million for the 2001-02 season and is predicting a $9.2 million shortfall this year. “This city is just not able financially to support a jumbo jet.”