“The Los Angeles Philharmonic will launch its first international radio broadcast partnership with England’s largest classical music station. The agreement with Classic FM announced Friday includes a 14-part concert series of recorded concerts under the name ‘Live with the L.A. Phil,’ broadcast Fridays starting June 1.”
Tag: 05.18.12
A New Opera About One Of Australia’s Great Love-And-Murder Triangles
“Composer Gordon Kerry and librettist Louis Nowra describe Midnight Son as ‘An opera inspired by a true story’. That story is infamous: the murky, tragic tale of Maria Korp, her suburban Don Giovanni of a husband, Joe, and his murder-intent mistress, Tania Herman. Worse cases occur in opera, but perhaps not with quite the same disturbingly still-warm immediacy.”
Scotland’s Smaller Theatre Companies Beginning To Panic Over Planned Funding Changes
Creative Scotland, the country’s arts funding body, is discontinuing two-year supporting grants in favor of per-project awards. “Companies and individual practitioners are questioning whether they will be able to continue under the new regime, while there are warnings that individual artists will leave Scotland.”
Major Change In Australian Arts Funding Proposal: Make Big Companies Compete For Grants
“Opening the major performing arts companies – including the state theatre companies, Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet – to competition for funding and peer review will no doubt prove most contentious since it raises the possibility of a company losing ongoing funding.”
This Company Wants To Change Italian Dance-Theater, But Italy Bums Them Out
“Young Italian movement group Dewey Dell are dedicated to forging a new form of theatre integrating music, choreography and lighting, but are so depressed by the Italian economy they are saddened when considering the future.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, 20th Century’s Great Champion Of Lieder, Dead At 86
“His Protean career was surely unique, as he sang and recorded more vocal music than any who came before. … More than that, he was an inspiration to the vast number of singers who have followed his example in this field, and made the singing of lieder a common experience, not to forget the audience he created for this kind of music-making.”
The Next Finland? The Czech Republic Is Producing Crops Of Classical Stars
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, some exciting musicians have emerged from Prague and Brno, led by mezzo Magdalena Kozena, the Pavel Haas Quartet, and (more recently) the terrific Baroque orchestra Collegium 1704. And that’s just the first generation.
Meet The Father Of Chinese Rock ‘n’ Roll
Cui Jian, now 50, was trained as a classical trumpeter; he took up electric guitar and singing in the 1980s and became the People’s Republic’s first rock star. Awkwardly for his relations with the Communist Party, one of his biggest hits, “Nothing to My Name,” became the unnoficial anthem of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising.
Andrew Davis Named Melbourne Symphony’s Chief Conductor
The 68-year-old Briton is currently “principal conductor at Lyric Opera of Chicago after having been one of the longest-serving chief conductors of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.” The MSO has lacked a chief conductor for three years, following the early and sudden departure of Oleg Caetani.