Category: music

Two weeks after the Metropolitan Opera announced its 2017-18 season, including a big new production of Tosca headlined by Kaufmann, the tenor revealed that he had withdrawn from the project. However, tucked deep in this article by Michael Cooper about Kaufmann’s frequent cancellations is a quote from Met general manager Peter Gelb which implies that he made Kaufmann’s withdrawal more complete than Kaufmann himself had wished.

Housed in a 15th-century manor on the Rhine, the museum “showcases 350 mechanical instruments dating back three centuries. Think delicate music boxes, one with a chirping bird on top, or massive pipe organs, and pretty much everything in between. The extensive collection also includes tools and machines used to produce the instruments, and cardboard sheet music.” (includes videos)

“Brian Lauritzen, a broadcaster with the Los Angeles classical radio station KUSC, has been tracking the gender breakdown of the composers represented on the upcoming season schedules of American orchestras and opera companies. The picture his numbers paint isn’t a pretty one. There are organizations, including major orchestras in St. Louis, Houston and Dallas, that are contentedly planning all-male seasons for the coming year. The New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra join San Francisco in the one-woman-is-plenty club.”

Let the arguments begin!

Lyric general director Anthony Freud, along with the company’s CFO and board chairman, remember the days (the ’90s and before) when their season sold out on subscription, describe the extra attention they’re offering subscribers today, and list half a dozen strategies they’re using to strengthen operations and increase income (which has been suffering).

Danish culture minister Mette Bock is planning to spin off the national broadcaster’s orchestra, choir and concert hall (possibly to the national opera house) and eliminate the Copenhagen Philharmonic (not the capital’s only orchestra), distributing its musicians and budget among four regional orchestras.

“What is known is that on October 18, 1995, a friend dropped by to check on the apartment while 91-year-old Morini was in the hospital. The door to the apartment was locked and everything seemed to be in its place. So, the friend, Erica Bradford, along with her daughter Valerie, went to check on the violin as was her habit. She retrieved the key from a box where it was hidden in the bedroom, opened the china closet door, and found a different case sitting in the place the Strad’s had occupied for so many years. She opened the imposter and discovered that it was empty. The violin was gone.”

For Vulture‘s podcast about jokes, Good One, Yankovic details how – in a thorough, methodical way – he turned the Pharrell/Robin Thicke hit “Blurred Lines” into “Word Crimes,” about a grammar nerd fighting the good fight for linguistic justice. (audio plus written Q&A)

“An excerpt from a largely forgotten Italian opera that Liszt began in 1849 will, belatedly, get its premiere this summer. You can listen to part of the work, based on Lord Byron’s Assyrian tragedy Sardanapalus, here.”