The company’s general manager says that “postponing” the new Verdi Forza del destino staging, a co-production with English National Opera, by Calixto Bieito will save the financially troubled Met $1 million. (Gelb didn’t mention that Bieito is probably the most controversial, not to say notorious, of the directors with new productions planned for 2016-17.)
Category: music
Australia’s Leading Baroque Music Festival Shuts Down, Owing Performers $400,000
Brisbane Baroque was a huge hit with audiences, critics, and awards bodies (it won five Helpmann Awards including one for the best opera production in all of Australia), but musicians and creditors went months without getting paid and the festival’s executive director checked himself into a psych ward.
Hoard Of Gold Coins Found Inside Antique Broadwood Piano
“The gold was recently discovered by a tuner inside a Broadwood upright piano which had originally been sold in 1906 by a musical instruments shop in Saffron Walden, Essex.”
Toronto Symphony Launches National Project To Make A Case For Canadian Composers
“The list of partners includes virtually every major and many minor orchestras, with commissioned composers including Andrew Balfour, Chan Ka Nin, Kevin Lau, Nicole Lizée and John Rea among others. The orchestras themselves have been invited to choose the composers with whom they would like to work, with the TSO agreeing to perform the full complement of fanfares.”
What Works? US Symphony Orchestras Are Programming Live Music Movie Nights
“The allure of this programming from an orchestra’s perspective is easy to see. In their never-ending quest to bring in new audiences — particularly patrons for whom the standard classical repertoire is less familiar terrain than it was to their parents and grandparents — the San Francisco Symphony and similar organizations have found a product that exerts a different sort of allure from that of a Brahms or Mahler symphony.”
How I Learned Systematically To Adore Classical Music
“I stood like a tourist at the foot of Everest. The tower of music loomed forebodingly before me. I began with baby steps, playing piano records in the background as I went about the day, letting the tunes seep in by osmosis, not getting too close in case I scared myself off. Over the next few weeks the slow-drip method started to take and the music began to fall into place. Melodies untangled. Their logic unfurled. Basically, I listened, and listened again, until the music made sense.”
James Conlon Will Stay With L.A. Opera At Least Through 2020-2021 Season
Conlon is celebrating his 10th anniversary with the opera, and so far he’s conducted “a record number of performances.”
Can The Minnesota Orchestra Hit The Holy Grail Of Attracting Diverse Audiences?
“People say, ‘I would go more if I was represented on stage,'” says one former board member. But it took until 2015 and the Minnesota Orchestra’s tour of Cuba to create a diversity committee. “There is not a single black musician among the orchestra’s permanent members.”
The Sheer Power Of Emerging Stars At The Met Should Be Attracting Audience In Droves (Why Isn’t It?)
“The reasons for the Met’s less than spectacular performance at the box office remain somewhat obscure, particularly since, on a day to day basis, the company offers what is likely the strongest casting of any opera company in the world.” Indeed, the Met is in the middle of “a golden age of vocalism.”
How Algorithms Designed Hamburg’s Stunning New Concert Hall
“The auditorium—the largest of three concert halls in the Elbphilharmonie—is a product of parametric design, a process by which designers use algorithms to develop an object’s form. Algorithms have helped design bridges, motorcycle parts, typefaces—even chairs. In the case of the Elbphilharmonie, Herzog and De Meuron used algorithms to generate a unique shape for each of the 10,000 gypsum fiber acoustic panels that line the auditorium’s walls like the interlocking pieces of a giant, undulating puzzle.”