Category: music

Early this month Franz Welser-Möst suddenly (but discreetly) quit as the house’s principal conductor; eleven days later, Bertrand de Billy angrily resigned, hurling accusations at the company’s Intendant, Dominique Meyer. Now Meyer is responding, saying, “We went into the summer season at peace. Now these allegations. I cannot understand where they’ve come from.”

“Dubbed the Maria Callas Opera Academy, the project was a long-term goal of soprano Vasso Papantoniou and her husband, writer Vassilis Vassilikos. Yesterday at a gala concert, the artistic director of the Greek National Opera Myron Michailidis announced the organization would support the construction plans.”

“We write as a group of American composers in loud support of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and its unique and important place in American concert music. We unanimously encourage those involved in its management, board and funders to do whatever necessary to keep this great orchestra vital and thriving. The ASO must not be allowed to degrade, piecemeal, into a second-class entity.”

But this time he’s doing it during lunchtime instead of morning rush hour, he’s announcing the place and date in advance, and there will be a video crew.

“You would think that in the midst of so much calamity in recent years Vallejo would want a symphony, would do whatever it could to have one, but sometimes the fact is that there’s just no place for a symphony in a particular town.”

In his resignation letter he declared that he was leaving “with great regret, and after long and tormented reflection”. Responding in a public statement, the theatre’s general manager Carlo Fuortes and the mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, said that Muti was “undoubtedly influenced” by “continual protests, internal conflicts and strikes that have lasted months”.

“Until fairly recently, the Mormon composers who were known as such weren’t, frankly, all that known outside of Mormon circles. Conversely, those who were more well-known as composers weren’t readily identified with their native religion.”

“Our brilliant and creative musicians, who need to be intimately involved in the creation of our path to the future, have been asked to leave the building – and Atlanta is left with a deafening silence. … If the 10th-largest urban economy in America is incapable of sustaining its cultural jewel, what does that signal about our country?”

Justin Davidson: “I don’t believe that this imperfect opera denigrates Jews, incites hatred, endorses libels, or casts collective blame. It doesn’t glorify terrorists or justify their crimes. What it does do is embed a spasm of thuggish violence in a broad historical context, a job that Adams, librettist Alice Goodman, and the original production’s director and all-around inspiration man, Peter Sellars, have fumbled badly.”

“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is considering a privately owned site in Naperville as a location for a permanent outdoor concert venue. But DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin says a lot has to happen before the proposal becomes a reality.”