Category: music

For the second year, the performance opened with long applause for Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, sitting in the royal box with four government ministers. As last year, the Italian government is struggling, and the long applause was seen as a show of support for Italian institutions, which Mattarella represents in a non-partisan role. – Washington Post (AP)

Orlando, a new opera based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a time-traveling, gender-bending love letter to her aristocratic lover Vita Sackville-West, “is the first opera commissioned from a female composer by the Vienna Opera in its 150 years of existence.” They wanted to get the costumes right, so they commissioned designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, who is a bit busy. She says, “There were 36 main costumes for the principals, plus 106 others for the choruses and other groups. I accepted to do the costumes on condition that … I could use the theme of “Orlando” for the two Paris collections proceeding it.” – The New York Times

“Eun Sun Kim, the South Korean conductor who made a powerful San Francisco Opera debut in June leading Dvořák’s Rusalka, has been named the company’s next music director. She will be just the fourth person to occupy the position in the company’s nearly 100-year history, and the only Asian woman to hold an artistic leadership role with a major North American opera company.” – San Francisco Chronicle

“[The 42-year-old] was dismissed Thursday by two of the world’s most prestigious houses: the Royal Opera in London and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. His firing comes after an investigation by the Royal Opera, which determined that he had demonstrated ‘inappropriate and aggressive behavior‘ during an RO tour of Japan in September.” – NPR

“[Porgy and Bess], which opened the season in September, was scheduled to return on Jan. 8 for seven performances, through Feb. 1. On Thursday, the Met announced it would add three more, on Feb. 4, 12 and 15. Big repertory companies, which plan their crowded schedules years in advance, rarely have the flexibility to add performances to even their most successful shows. But the Met had an unexpected hole in its schedule.” – The New York Times

For some, buying records is no longer about owning the same piece of music as everyone else but owning a version of it that few others have. It reflects a change in contemporary relationships to owning music, says Sevier. “Owning a limited or special edition is doubling down on the closeness you feel to an album or artist. You can’t display your streaming history like a trophy.” – The Guardian

Some of Los Angeles’ selling points need to be reset. The idea of endless summers has shifted in the age of climate change. “It Never Rains in Southern California” has morphed into Bad Religion’s “Los Angeles Is Burning.” The carefree allure of rolling down the Ventura Highway used to be a cool thing to sing about. Now the drive is mostly a bumper-to-bumper slog. – Los Angeles Times

“Lyrics site Genius on Tuesday sued Google and LyricFind for $50 million, alleging they have been misappropriating its transcriptions for years. … [Genius] used a digital watermark to see if other sites were copying its product — and it spelled ‘redhanded’ in Morse code.” – The Hollywood Reporter