Category: music

“James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, earned $2.1 million in 2010, up 39 percent from a year earlier and more than the compensation of the general manager, Peter Gelb, according to the Met’s 2010- 2011 tax return.”

“A more delicate issue: the perception that organizations such as the L.A. Phil, Long Beach Opera, and The Industry, a new company, are upstaging L.A. Opera by doing more inventive productions of opera and opera-like music theater.”

“In a new study, a computer program shows how listeners drive music to evolve in a certain way. Although the resulting strains are hardly Don Giovanni, the finding shows how users’ tastes exert their own kind of natural selection, nudging tunes to evolve out of noise.”

“Leopold Stokowski could only have been invented – by Leopold Stokowski. Magnetic, innovative, and the exception to most rules, starting a century ago Stokowski made the Philadelphia Orchestra what it is today, with a glamour and showmanship that reached listeners well beyond the core classical audience.”

Ever since Australian authorities abandoned architect Jørn Utzon’s original plans mid-construction and went for a quick, cheap completion, the Opera Theatre in the SOH has been notorious for inadequate acoustics and a cramped orchestra pit. But for its upcoming production of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Opera Australia is actually resorting to putting the (large) orchestra and chorus in another hall and piping their music into the Opera Theatre, where the soloists will sing unamplified.

The Australian String Quartet now has a set of Guadagninis; three Australian Chamber Orchestras principals now play a Stradivari, a Guarneri and a Guadagnini; the Sydney Symphony has begun a mini-shopping spree from older Italian string instruments.

“But from rock to rap and hip hop to grunge, the independent music scene has blossomed in recent years as the Internet and an explosion in live venues have given an outlet to acts long shunned by state-run television and radio.”

David Lowery: “I applaud your courage in admitting you do not pay for music, and that you do not want to but you are grappling with the moral implications. … Fairly compensating musicians is not a problem that is up to governments and large corporations to solve. It is not up to them to make it ‘convenient’ so you don’t behave unethically.”

“The Met, the largest U.S. opera presenter, spent $321 million during 2010-2011, up 8 percent. It had a $41 million surplus, reversing a $25 million deficit the prior season, as contributions and revenue surged, according to the [company’s most recent available tax] return.”

“Davis said his four-year tenure with the MSO, commencing early 2013, will focus each season on the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, the tone poems of Richard Strauss and the orchestral music of Hector Berlioz.”