“The opera’s board has recently been weighing another option: reorganizing the company through the bankruptcy process, with one of the bidders serving as a plan sponsor. That course could make it easier for NYCO to retain a bequest estimated to be worth $5.5 million.”
Category: music
Why Did Mendelssohn Never Write An Opera?
His music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems so promising. Yet “spend any time in the company of Mendelssohn’s letters, and it becomes clear that here is a man of prodigious talent, shining intellect and bubbling enthusiasm who, when it came to opera, pretty much pressed self-destruct on any project that was suggested to him.”
How A Fundraising Concert Reinvented Pop Music
“By helping create a new superleague of rock stars, an event conceived purely to raise money for African famine victims ended up generating just as much revenue for the labels to whom the artists were signed. From the industry’s perspective, the timing was perfect. Compact disc players were becoming affordable and the format gave baby boomers the perfect excuse to forego new music in order to re-purchase albums by many of the artists who performed that day.”
A Look Inside The Grueling Preparation Required For A Boston Symphony Audition
“The technique on the instruments has grown, but what hasn’t grown is the innate musicianship, the interpretive abilities of players. Sometimes that is the most difficult thing to measure in an audition.”
South Florida Is Losing Its Only Classical Radio Station
“Minnesota-based American Public Media is selling their Classical South Florida radio stations to Education Media Foundation, a California religious broadcaster for $21.7 million … There has been no announcement of the sale on the stations’s airwaves or on its Classical South Florida website.”
Greek National Opera Robbed At Gunpoint
“Police are seeking an armed robber who burst into the Greek National Opera box office in central Athens on Wednesday morning and forced the cashier to hand over 11,000 euros, the GNO said over the weekend.”
Ludovic Morlot Extends With Seattle Symphony
“The Seattle Symphony has extended music director Ludovic Morlot’s contract for two additional years, through 2019 …. Morlot’s original agreement covered the time span of September 2011 through August 2017.”
What Made Jon Vickers Great – And Terrifying
“The characters into whose mindsets Vickers wormed his way were mostly tragic figures: flawed leaders, social outcasts, sexual obsessives caught in the toils of Eros. The labour the roles involved was immense … Vickers could, indeed, open himself up to psychotic states.” (includes video of Vickers as Canio, Don Jose and Peter Grimes)
The Pittsburgh Symphony Is Fighting A Pretty Darn Scary Drop In Attendance
“After raising ticket prices for two consecutive seasons, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has seen its 2014-15 sales for Mellon Grand Classics drop from 61 percent of Heinz Hall capacity to 50 percent. The Pops series dropped from 62 to 56 percent.”
How Haiti’s Disasters (And History) Created A New Musical Legacy
“The roots of electronic rabòday can be found in rara, a music older than Haiti itself. It began with the indigenous Taíno people, mixed with rhythms brought from Africa by slaves, and eventually morphed and modernized into a style that today is played by roving musicians throughout the country.”