All labor action planned for February has been called off as the company and the Musicians' Union have come to a revised agreement about the instrumentalists' fate when ENO moves from London to Manchester. - The Guardian
Donato Cabrera ends his 10-year term as the orchestra's music director this summer; with no successor yet appointed, Slatkin will serve as Artistic Consultant. (In fact, the Vegas Phil's executive director hints that there may not be a single music director going forward.) - Las Vegas Review-Journal (third item)
"Jukebox" opera was hardly unknown in centuries past; it was called pasticcio. And while Schubert was a master of vocal music, his operas are rarely revived. (Blame the bad librettos.) So conductor Raphaël Pichon has taken highlights from those operas and put them together with a new story. - The New York Times
During a concert on Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, the musicians of the Belgrade Philharmonic read a letter to the audience that pointed out their difficult position, and organizational and material problems that remain unresolved. - OperaWire
"Imagine a small island where, for an entire week, you’re in the company of some of the world’s finest classical musicians. They play almost continuously from 9.30am until bedtime. You’re one of more than 13,500 audience members." Welcome to the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. - The Guardian
There’s a lot of boutique blogs and a lot of local localized music blogs. But as far as a thing that’s covering music, period, it’s probably like one writer at all the major newspapers and outlets and then a handful of music publications that still exist. - Columbia Journalism Review
In August, the company reduced its staff by about 16%, developed a smaller scale for Festival O, and trimmed the budget by about 20% to $11 million, a level director David Devan had called “short-term sustainable.” Now the annual budget has been cut again, to $10 million for the coming season. - Philadelphia Inquirer
The new venue, on a city-owned plot directly across the Scioto River from the central business district, would have a main auditorium with a capacity of 1,600 (the orchestra's current home, the Ohio Theatre, seats almost 2,800) and nine other performance and event spaces. - The Columbus Dispatch
I realized the dangers of opera too late to be saved. By ten I had already been corrupted by my parents. Neither of them had ever been to the opera. The notion would have struck them as absurd. But they loved singing, and that included the operatic arias they heard on variety shows. - Hudson Review
“A lot of artists are afraid to approach labels or even question the accuracy of royalty payments. But we’re getting like 17-cent checks. I know artists who have sold millions of records who are having a hard time in survival mode, when money could be sitting in a portal somewhere.” - Los Angeles Times
The earlier rehearsal with the London Chamber Orchestra (LCO) had not gone well. Half of the musicians walked out in protest at the way they had been treated over the past five months, during which time none of them had been paid. - The Guardian
If we’re very fortunate, we may yet have another opportunity to hear these musicians working together on an ad hoc basis. For now, though, this partnership — arguably the most consequential in the orchestra’s 113-year history — has officially come to an end. - San Francisco Chronicle
Can any opera company withstand the blows of the 21st century? “The ongoing crisis in opera parallels a current 'free fall' … in American theater — with low ticket sales, slumping philanthropy and rising costs putting experimental platforms and long-standing institutions alike on indefinite hiatus.” - Washington Post
In the early 21st century, downloads were a thing, but now, downloading rather than streaming "is a purely performative gesture – it only ever happens as a result of some kind of factional culture war that somebody has the money and inclination to try to represent on the charts." - The Guardian (UK)
Matthew Sheeran: "The first thing you have to do is get the score translated into what I call scordatura notation, where what you hear is not what you see. I had to translate it into music for keyboard, where the octave isn’t an octave." - The New York Times
