Category: music

La Scala’s standing room tickets are much coveted. But as the opera house heads into a renovation, the company does away with its low-priced standing room. “That shuts the standees out of the coming season’s celebrations of the 100-year anniversary of the death of Giuseppe Verdi.” – Ottawa Citizen (AP)

The Leeds Piano Competition, set to run next week, is one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world. “But competitions aren’t what they used to be. There was a day when being a prize-winner was a passport to celebrity. But now competitions are so numerous that winning at least something is fairly commonplace. They are also subject to accusations of infighting, poor decisions and corruption.” – The Guardian

Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony begin their Beethoven-as-reconceived-by Mahler series. Some things work, some don’t. “Last night’s concert could not have happened at any other time in history but our own, and because of that, it’s worth hearing. A century ago, critics would have to have been either fer or agin this sort of thing. Now they can hedge with that best of all hedges: Who knows if Mahler’s Beethoven is good or bad, but it’s certainly interesting.” – Washington Post

Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the leading lights of the mid-20th Century avant-garde, and he influenced many composers. “Yet today it is hard to find Stockhausen even on CD, let alone in performance. He has all but disappeared from view. Some of the reasons for this lie at his own door. Stockhausen now releases CDs on his own label, but makes it frustratingly difficult to buy them.” – The Guardian

A Danish billionaire has decided to pay the entire £118 million cost of building Copenhagen’s first opera house. – Ananova

Long believed lost, supposedly rediscovered and recorded in the 1990s, then “refound” nine months ago in the basement of a Moscow museum, Shostakovich’s Second Jazz Suite is finally being faithfully reconstructed to its original form for its premiere at Saturday night’s closing of The Proms. – The Telegraph (UK)

When La Scala’s season opens next week with “La Bohème,” the opera house’s famous standing-room galleries will be empty, due to fire-safety regulations. “This is tragic news for its habitual dwellers, the feared and respected ‘loggionisti,’ the ardent opera buffs who sit or stand in the galleries and are said to dictate failure or success.” – New York Times

A Canadian singer has taken first place in Placido Domingo’s $50,000 world opera competition in Los Angeles. – Los Angeles Times

Conductor Daniel Barenboim has given the Berlin Senate an ultimatum: provide $5 million more for the budget of the Deutsche Staatsoper or he will leave at the end of his current contract. “I have said what the Staatsoper needs,” he is quoted as saying. “Either it receives that. Then I will stay. Or it does not receive that. Then I will go.” – Chicago Tribune

After 43 years, John Crosby steps down as head of the Santa Fe Opera. “Santa Fe has been a huge influence on the American opera scene, the way Glyndebourne influences opera in England, and Aix-en-Provence influences opera in France. You walk across the deck here on a summer evening, and you see the movers and shakers of the opera world. And when an opera has been a success here, it is suddenly looked at by other companies.” – New York Times