Category: music

The Teatr Wielki “has embarked on a new wave of collaborations with major European houses, while maintaining a commitment to Polish repertory. The theater is being physically overhauled … The annual budget of approximately $50 million – 80 percent of which comes from the Ministry of Culture – has doubled since 1998 … The attendance rate has hovered above 90 percent since 2010.”

From acoustical improvements to replacing 50-year-old heating and air-conditioning equipment to addingmore bathrooms to a big backstage wall “that appears to serve no purpose except getting in the way, … the needs are not cosmetic but fundamental to how efficiently and cost-effectively the Pavilion can operate.”

“The closely watched standoff is emblematic of the troubled state of opera in Italy. It was also seen as a test case for labor relations in the country, whose government has been struggling to change laws to make it easier for employers to hire and fire workers.”

“His mission – of boldly presenting diverse repertory; of not being hemmed in by perceived boundaries between styles and eras; of championing living composers, especially Americans, and especially younger ones – [has] had enormous impact on the scene.”

“Back in the mid-20th century, orchestras and traditional pop vocalists were not on the fringe, they were de rigueur. Artists like Andre Previn, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and so many more shared the wave lengths along side Elvis and the Beatles, understanding thAt they appealed to different fans, but in some grand sense, made their own contributions to pop culture of the day.”

“Each man heard in the great masterwork – in the same sublime solos and chorales – an entirely different, indeed contradictory, message; two opposed promulgations in the same score, two contrary cries in the same edifice of beauty.”

“Sorry to say, what the audience got in this work was not what the ASO sounds like under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. Although the collective bargaining agreement was successfully wrapped up in time for this concert, many of the ASO’s musicians are still committed to temporary engagements with orchestras elsewhere.”

“There is no way to make an argument that one type of music’s formal devices are better than another’s.”

“They’re taking a mode of salesmanship that’s traditionally worked on impressionable, wildly hormonal young girls and turning it towards two groups — the gays and the moms — who someone on their team decided would be the next-most susceptible.”

“In fact, in order to do its supporting job as a score for a film that depends on so many difficult concepts, it had to be smart: Emotional heft alone won’t cut it when your camera is headed for a singularity. Zimmer had to find musical ways of reinforcing Nolan’s astrophysics textbook of a script.”