In February baritone Bryn Terfel felt a stab in his back in the middle of a performance and limped off the Metropolitan Opera stage. After back surgery and five months to recover, he’s back. “It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my very short time on this planet.” – CNN
Tag: 10.04.00
HANDICAPPING THE MUSIC DIRECTOR SWEEPSTAKES
The “Court of Musical Euphemisms and Factual Economies” is now in session. Sorting out the twists and turns of choosing music directors for America’s major orchestras is a mysterious game. “For reasons I have never fathomed, US coverage of serious music seldom delves below the veneer of stability and tends to reiterate every last euphemism and half-truth without so much as a cocked eyebrow. Such complacency nurtures a system rich in abuses and absurdities.” – The Telegraph (UK)
IT’S ABOUT QUALITY AND QUANTITY
Antonio Pappano on his plans as the new music director at the Royal Opera House: “Conduct as many masterpieces as possible and there is a chance that their quality will rub off on you.” If that maxim holds true, he will be in dazzling shape in four years’ time, for by then he intends to have conducted the Royal Opera in Ariadne, Wozzeck, Falstaff, Butterfly, Lohengrin, Pagliacci, Salome, Aida, Tannhauser, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Faust and Peter Grimes. It’s an astonishing list. If a No 11 bus happens to stray on to the Covent Garden stage, you feel that Pappano will conduct that too.” – The Times (UK)
WARSAW PIANO COMPETITION OPENS
The Chopin Competition, one of the world’s major international piano competitions, is set to begin. The competition has launched the careers of pianists such as Maurizio Pollini and Krystian Zimerman and standards are so rigorous that no winners were declared in the last two competitions (in 1990 and 1995). “This year’s competition has already proved tough. Only 98 pianists qualified, based on videotapes of their performances, compared with 140 in 1995.” – Ottawa Citizen (AP)
DOHNANYI SEPARATES SHOULDER, STILL CONDUCTS
Cleveland Orchestra conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi slipped on a stair Sunday night and dislocated his right shoulder. But though he was noticeably in pain, the accident didn’t stop him from conducting the orchestra’s opening night in Carnegie Hall. It is Carnegie Hall, after all. – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
WHAT THEATER IS NOT
“Entertaining,” “instructional,” “celebratory,” or “cathartic,” at least in the opinion of one riled performing arts professor. The solution? “We should refuse to sit and watch the same old masquerade, the same old plays, the same old actors. We need to kill the theatre off so that new performance can have room to grow.” – The Guardian
LEADING BLACK THEATRE CLOSES
New Jersey’s Crossroads Theatre Company has closed down. The Tony Award-winning company, one of the nation’s most prominent black theaters, announced its decision Monday. “The bottom line is that we are in great debt – $1.7 million to $2 million in debt.” – Philadelphia Inquirer (AP)
MUSIC CONSERVATORY ONLINE
A Canadian man has come up with software that allows teachers to teach music in real time over the internet. Keyboards plugged into computers allow immediate interaction between teacher and student, even if they’re thousands of miles away. – CBC 10/04/00
MOMA’S POST-MODERNIST AGENDA?
The final installment of the Museum of Modern Art’s reimagining art of the 20th Century has opened. “It brings to completion a project very dear to the hearts and minds of the museum’s current curatorial cadre: the de-aestheticization of the museum’s policies and programs. Aesthetic judgments have now been abandoned in favor of sociological classification at MoMA, and to assist in this transformation the museum has established a department of Writing Services, which may or may not account for the unfortunate Open Ends title itself, already a subject of much ribald humor.” – New York Observer
OPEN SECRETS
The U.S. and Russia reached a breakthrough agreement Wednesday at an international conference on the restitution of Holocaust-era art to open their archives to help recover Nazi-looted treasures. Access to Russian archives has been of crucial concern to Jewish groups pressing for restitution. – Yahoo! News (Reuters)