Category: music

The Houston Grand Opera general director’s major new project is HGOco, “a lab and a playground” that introduces composers and librettists to local communities (including immigrant groups) to develop new operas. “[It’s] an initiative to reach a very large number of people who may not normally get involved with an opera company.”

“David Devan, 48, has been shouldering increasing responsibility since coming to the Philadelphia troupe as managing director in 2006, after serving as director of Pacific Opera Victoria in British Columbia.”

“All the folks who talk about accessibility, audience friendliness, etc., might do well to ponder why vocal music, or music that accompanies narratives of some sort, reaches more people than instrumental music of any kind.”

“The orchestra’s prospects become rather more clouded, both artistically and financially, in the long term if such a thing as a pattern should emerge from Muti’s cancellations.”

“Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti will miss the final week of his February residency as he recovers from surgery to repair multiple face and jaw fractures suffered in a fall during rehearsal last week.”

“The Metropolitan Opera in New York has lost its Siegfried for its costly new production of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle. … Ben Heppner has withdrawn from the production because the singer ‘has retired the role from his repertory’.”

“Now that the novelty has flaked away, what endures is a string of gnomic couplets that never quite adds up to a story, and a splendid score that resembles a Wyoming prairie: a simple crust hiding a labyrinth of hillocks and coulees.”

The bargaining session comes on the heels of a new formal contract offer made late last week by management, which has requested a response from the musicians by Friday. While management has not characterized the proposal as a “final offer,” officials have said the strike, which has caused the cancelation of nearly half the season, has reached a critical juncture.

“Disgruntled patrons complained Monday that the orchestra only played highlights of the movie’s musical score as a warm-up. When the lights went down and the film began, the symphony musicians had already exited the stage, leaving Maria on her own — with back-up from the audience singing the lyrics superimposed on the screen — to frolic through an Austrian mountain meadow.”

“An opera company has added a minimum age recommendation to tickets for its latest production – which includes bare breasts and buttocks. Opera North added the 12+ age suggestion after receiving an ‘extraordinarily varied’ reaction to Bizet’s Carmen.“