Category: music

“Vienna State Opera is under pressure to make savings of 10 million euros (£7.8m) after a warning from the Austrian government.”

Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, in which Yevgeny Nikitin was going to sing the title role before news came out that he once had a swastika inked into his chest, “is about a man with a secret, a youthful mistake that he spends a long, long time paying for. … But while the details [of Nikitin’s story] keep altering, their implications are profound for a festival that cannot and should not stop thinking about its past.”

“Parents who find their children’s thumping stereos too much to bear will also be comforted to know that it isn’t just the effect of age: modern songs have also grown progressively louder over the past 50 years. … While loudness has steadily increased since the 1950s, the [research] team found that the variety of chords, melodies and types of sound being used by musicians has become ever smaller.”

“The [baritone] who quit the Bayreuth opera festival when it emerged he once had at least one Nazi-related symbol tattooed on his body remains scheduled to sing a new production of Wagner’s Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera next season.”

Lincoln Center has its new-ish and successful White Lights Festival; the Lucerne Festival has titled its 2012 edition to “Faith”; even the secular, swanky Salzburg Festival has added a ten-day “Spiritual Overture” to its schedule.

“Peter Nero has prevailed. His lawyers successfully beat back a move to oust the Grammy Award-winning pianist and conductor as head of the Philly Pops. Nero, 78, … will stay on the podium through the end of the 2012-13 season,” and the final year of his contract has been bought out.

“After weathering a tough season of shortfalls and layoffs, Vancouver Opera is back in the black – to the tune of a cool half-million.”

“Arts, Culture and Heritage Ministry Chris Finlayson says disestablishing the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is unthinkable. The idea has been put up for discussion, among others, in a review of the country’s orchestras by the Culture and Heritage Ministry.” The report offered several possibilities for change, among them reducing or eliminating the national touring orchestra’s subsidy in favor of the four regional orchestras.

“His method is to build shows as carefully as possible, let no detail slip by unconsidered, and miss no opportunity for what he calls ‘the transformational project,’ the endeavour that changes the company, ratchets up its level of achievement and – very importantly – alters people’s perceptions about what it can do. If it takes years to pull that off, he and his company are willing to work and wait.”

Evgeny Nikitin, who was singing the lead in this season’s only new production (The Flying Dutchman), was forced to withdraw after a German tabloid ran a photo of a bare-chested Nikitin, during his younger days as a heavy-metal drummer, with a swastika tattoo. (That symbol has since been inked over.)