Category: music

“Byrne worried about the professionalization of music – the idea that young people were being discouraged from making music for the love of it and being taught that there was a professional class of musician whose job it is to create music and a consumer class whose job it is to listen.”

“Peter Gelb has at least raised the possibility that some opera lovers feel less need to pay his (inflated) ticket prices when they can see the same production at a movie theater.”

“Pauline, featuring an original score by Canadian composer Tobin Stokes and famed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s debut as librettist, will run for six to 10 performances in May at the refurbished 400-seat York Theatre [in Vancouver].”

Zhang Yaxin “was a photographer for Xinhua News Agency when he was chosen by Jiang Qing, the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong, to photograph the performances of the model operas she developed after the Communist Party leaders banned traditional Peking opera for being too bourgeois.” And he was one of the few people besides Jiang Qing in all of China to have access to color film.

“Quarterly revenue for the period ending Dec. 31 was up 21% from the fourth quarter of 2011, tallying $1.4 billion, thanks to the presence of both Madonna and Lady Gaga on the touring circuit during the quarter. Yearly figures were likewise goosed by the Summer Olympics in London.”

“Attendance is down this season at the Metropolitan Opera, and officials there acknowledge that the fault is their own. They made going to the opera too expensive. So in a rarity in the rarefied world of the performing arts, the Met said it would reduce ticket prices next season. The average cost of admission will drop by 10 percent.”

“Rolex has bankrolled a foundation in his name; Salzburg plans a summer extravaganza around him; Hollywood is releasing a film about Simón Bolívar (Libertador, starring Edgar Ramírez), for which he wrote the music. Dudamel has become his own brand.”

“A listener content with sonic reductions is like a Rembrandt admirer satisfied with mass-produced miniatures. Real music lovers make a point of listening to real people play real pieces on real instruments in real time.”

“The notion of a publicly subsidized neighborhood network of Oregon classical music incubators merely redresses a long standing and grievous imbalance: tremendous taxpayer support for performances of existing, easily available works by long-dead European composers — but scant public investment in Oregon’s creative postclassical culture.”

The filmmaker behind Amour talks to the BBC World Service’s arts programme, The Strand, about his new production of Così fan tutte at the Teatro Real.