Category: music

Justin Davidson: “Freed from the enforced spaciousness of its theater [at Lincoln Center], the company can perform Handel in homey venues, cast young singers who won’t have to shout to fill spaces their voices aren’t ready for, and choose specialty repertoire without needing to sell 2,000 tickets each night.”

Plans in the 69-page document released by the orchestra’s board include: a 15% reduction in subscription concerts; expansion of the repertoire to include light classics, Broadway and film music and concert or semi-staged operas; no international touring that isn’t fully funded in advance; an end to white-tie-and-tails concert attire; and a major focus on improving customer service.

Muscle Shoals “wasn’t in New York or Chicago or Philadelphia, or indeed in any major conurbation. It was 780 miles away in the middle of nowhere in Alabama, a state where, up to 1955, black people couldn’t even use the same bus as white folks.” Yet the studio founded there 50 years ago became “a recording centre that was to cater for everybody from Aretha Franklin to The Osmonds, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon and from Etta James to the Rolling Stones.”

Martin Bresnick remembers a visit to the Czech capital less than two years after the Soviet occupation: a whirlwind city tour during a blizzard, a spontaneous demonstration during aperformance of Don Giovanni, and a public humiliation at the hands of composer/ideologue Luigi Nono.

“The disadvantage of going to the opera at the Sydney Opera House is that you can’t see Joern Utzon’s architectural masterpiece while you’re sitting in it. Solution: Opera Australia is to turn the opera-going experience inside out by putting a production of La Traviata on Sydney Harbour with views of the Opera House behind the stage.”

“Chorus America, which is holding its 34th annual convention in San Francisco June 8-11, claims that 42.6 million people in the U.S. sing in more than 270,000 choruses today.”

Zambello is not exactly replacing the outgoing general director Placido Domingo. “I’m not the artistic director, I’m the artistic advisor… This is an open-ended, exploratory job right now.”

“In this year’s awards, in the 53rd (annual ceremony), there were 34 mainstream categories. Next year, with the changed revision, there will be 20 mainstream categories. That’s a significant reduction in mainstream areas. In nonmainstream categories … there were 71. In the upcoming 54th awards, there will be 54.”

Why? A good many early recordings aren’t available anywhere else. “The first 25 years of the 20th century represent the birth of jazz, the blues, the Broadway musical, the big band, country music, pop singing and the Great American Songbook, not to mention a golden age of opera and a flowering of ethnic music. Superstars from the era still loom large: Enrico Caruso, Al Jolson, Bessie Smith.”

“Scottish Opera has developed a seasonal formula that embraces the philosophy of the lucky dip. Main-scale productions are fewer and further between, but by increasing its joint activity over a whole range of production scales and performance venues, it has managed to eke out a continuous string of activity that genuinely attempts to offer value for money.”