Category: music

London’s Covent Garden is in total disarray and not getting better any time soon. How’d it get in this mess? ” ‘It is brutally run by some deeply insensitive people, but to say there is a Mafia at work here is to credit them with too much organisation,’ said one well-known tenor.” – The Scotsman

Pianist Evgeny Kissin was a star when he burst onto the concert scene 10 years ago at the age of 19 and dazzled the music world. He’s still wildly popular with audiences “But if Kissin is more popular than ever, music critics at several important newspapers have fallen out of love with him. These critics report that Kissin is playing worse, instead of better, as he gets older.” – Public Arts

“A collection of more than 40,000 recordings of Italian music – LPs, 45s and 78s – has been donated by a Toronto family to the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the museum announced Wednesday. It took Frank Carenza and his wife, Rose, more than 50 years to collect the recordings that hold the history of Italian music during most of the 20th century.” – Ottawa Citizen (CP)

“Can you learn to manage a business by conducting an orchestra? A conductor’s leadership and the musicians’ interactions produce an immediate result for all to see. Business results are more difficult to interpret because it takes more time to judge the outcome of initiatives. Still, all knowledge workers face the same pressures to succeed. Helping musicians overcome their doubts and fears and adapt to new ideas is one of the principal tasks of their manager – their conductor.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

The original musical notes JS Bach wrote on manuscript paper are fading away. “Experts say the iron- or copper-based ink and cloth paper he used contained or produced sulfuric acid over the years. As a result, Bach’s very notes are disappearing in a slow-burn chemical reaction – literally eating themselves right off the page.” High tech conservation efforts are underway. – CNN

Almost 4,000 musicologists from around the world gathered in Toronto in the largest musicological gathering in history to present about a thousand academic papers. “Classical music is failing an awful lot of people. Boring concerts and lack of classical music programs in the schools are partly to blame. But so is boring musicology. Granted, I only heard a handful of papers over the weekend. But almost all of them – whether on pop or classical music – were jargon-laden, intellectually trivial, poorly written and atrociously delivered.” – National Post (Canada)

London’s Royal Opera House has become increasingly more foreboding to everyday people, not less. “It has become increasingly impossible to defend £20 million of public money subsidising this exclusive club year after year, not to mention the £78 million lottery grant for the rebuilding.” So maybe a little populist flair is in order… – The Times (UK)

SHORTLIST: The leading candidates to be the Royal Opera House’s next director… – The Times (UK)

Britain’s Royal Opera House has decided to develop its first Bollywood opera. A new, experimental production of Turandot, which is planned for April next year, will adopt all the conventions of the idiosyncratic Bollywood film-making style. The opera will mix Puccini’s music with tunes from the Bollywood hit parade, as well as devotional Punjabi music. – The Times of India

“I’m not one of those people who considers opera the catch-all cure for everything, but I’ve been backstage at enough of them to know that van Gogh, even on his worst days, would have fit right in. His temperament seems to be the soul of opera. Besides his reputed volatility, there’s his ability to find soaring emotional resonance in things others consider mundane. Had van Gogh lived long enough, he’d have found opera.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

Andrea Bocelli has been flirting with singing opera for a few years, and he’s been slammed by the critics for it. Today his new recording of “La Boheme” is released and it’s not as bad as some feared. Why care? “Since this one will probably outsell them all, and bring the largest audience to ”La Boheme” since the famous debut of ‘Live From the Met’ on television, we should be grateful that it is as good as it is.” – Boston Globe