Category: music

The benefactor who had funded the popular program died and the Met had to scramble to find ways to fund the discount program.

“Alas, looked at long term, one finds that Seattle Opera has not just one shortfall year to weather this year but chronic, structural problems that began seven years ago and extend, according to board chair John Nesholm, ‘a couple years’ into the future.”

“At its annual general meeting on Tuesday, MO announced a surplus of about $41,000 on an operating budget of about $1.6 million. It was able to stay out of the red through cost-cutting and a significant bequest.”

“So why hasn’t classical music embraced science fiction the way popular music has? After all, it’s a genre that simply adores mythology. Everyone from Monteverdi to Milhaud has done an Orpheus opera.”

“Somewhere in celebrity heaven, Marilyn Monroe is doing a great job of jinxing those who capitalize on her icon status by degrading it.” (And Anna Nicole Smith, poor dear, may be doing the same thing.)

The coming year was to be the first that included performances in Queensland’s capital on a regular yearly basis, as with Sydney and Melbourne. But OA’s inaugural season in Brisbane was planned with $1 million each from the federal and state governments, and Queensland’s new administration wants to cut back its share.

“According to the goodbye note … posted on the label’s website, ‘the actual infrastructure that New Albion was created in, one that resembled an independent record label, no longer exists and has yet to be replaced in the new order, so we are moving on’.”

“We can watch movies online with the credits included, and the same should be true for digitally released recordings. If music devices can access millions of tracks in the cloud, we’re confident we can find a way to acknowledge those who created the tracks here on earth.”

“New research from Japan reveals the same technique it took Renee Fleming years to master comes quite naturally to a gibbon. An ability we thought of as uniquely human is, in fact, something we share with at least one other species.”

“The politically important stuff about music isn’t the ‘content’ of the lyrics; it’s the symbolic gestures made by the people performing them. In fact, the lyrics matter so little that Paul Ryan can enjoy songs [by Rage Against the Machine] about American foreign policy that are diametrically opposed to his belief in American exceptionalism.”