"Those ushers who once carried proud armfuls of programs now wander the lobbies, outfitted (sometimes literally) with oversize QR codes, waiting to be scanned by passing patrons like a can of soup at the self-checkout." - Washington Post
Stefan Soltesz, an Austrian conductor, was near the end of the first act of Richard Strauss' The Silent Woman at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich when he fell from the podium. One opera director collaborator said, "In a world of dilettantes, he was the real thing." - The New York Times
The idea that “the unborn” are in any sense people has always been an appalling misrepresentation. Today, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision stripping away decades’ worth of well-established abortion rights, “Frau” feels more problematic than ever. - San Francisco Chronicle
This roadhouse drama has pitted neighbor against neighbor in a remote area where lots are the size of baseball fields and police cars seldom patrol. One longtime resident describes the area as a ring of desert fiefdoms. - Los Angeles Times
Today it's different: The culture of personalities has taken over in all fields, with social media and all this. So I feel that today, when there is so much more equality — and of course, there still could be and should be more — we could finally speak about music. - NPR
"Because every hard-of-hearing person has a different history with music, and because every brain is different, how an individual's vibrotactile sense may fill in for the loss of hearing will vary. Either way, vibration communicated through touch offers a wealth of musical subtlety that researchers are now quantifying." - Nautilus
"It is a game you can train for, one you can become tremendously skilled at, but that skill and work is such a basic requirement that it may as well not matter. People don't win by being good at it, they win by being able to foot the bill." - Van
In 1965 the Pulitzer board rejected a unanimous recommendation from the music jury to award Duke Ellington a special citation for long-term achievement.” It was the second consecutive year that no Pulitzer for music was awarded. - The New York Times
Lincoln Center president Henry Timms: "In terms of volume, probably, the amount of classical music being presented hasn't changed much. The nature of it has changed, to some degree, though not fundamentally." New York Times classical critic Zachary Woolfe: "Uh-huh." - The New York Times
Jonathon Heyward, now 29 and chief conductor of the Northwest German Philharmonic, will be (after the late James DePreist of the Oregon Symphony) the second African-American music director of a major US orchestra in history. He begins his initial five-year term in the fall of 2023. - Yahoo! (The Baltimore Sun)
Mahler and Beethoven left several tantalizing blueprints of their 10th Symphonies behind. Now, computer scientists are developing algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI) to lift the “curse of the ninth” and complete the unfinished works of these classical masters. - Mental Floss
An experienced stage director as well as a renowned administrator, Audi doesn’t just work on grand strategy and schmooze with donors. He also gets into the details of craft, closely overseeing rehearsals. - The New York Times
“They don't care if Kate Bush was big 30 years ago, they're just like, this is the first time we've heard this and it's dope. They don’t care if they’re listening to Debussy, or Max Richter, or John Williams, and they don't care what year it’s from. - ClassicFM
Popular new opera? Well, yes: the Met did four main-stage contemporary works just last season. (Also, we're talking the likes of Jake Heggie, not Harrison Birtwistle.) Here are readers' top choices, from Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de loin (2000) to Tobias Picker's Awakenings (2022). - San Francisco Classical Voice
