Like Kleiber, Klaus Tennstedt and Leonard Bernstein seemed to harness everything they knew in the heat of the moment. But Kleiber also had structural rigour and brisk tempos that gave his performances an infectious buoyancy. - Gramophone
"The ENO will move to a base outside the capital by March 2029 – three years after originally envisaged. Before then, it will develop an artistic programme in its new city, while transitioning to a new business model that allows it to deliver a substantial season every year in (London)." - The Guardian
"The Bayreuth Festival intends to present Rienzi in 2026 for its 150th anniversary, going outside the canon of Richard Wagner's final 10 operas for the first time. Wagner's family still runs the festival in Germany, and until now has limited it to only what are considered his mature works." - AP
Erica Muhl, who became the school's leader two years ago, went on leave abruptly last month and put her house on the market; this week, the board announced that she won't be back. Students and faculty, who say they rarely saw her on campus, want answers. - MSN (The Boston Globe)
"His letters show how he savvily wrote with an eye toward the market, hoping to delight listeners at every level of society. And pleasure was political in an age when some of the boldest advocates for free speech and personal choice were libertines." - MSN (The Atlantic)
She’s an advocate, a style icon, a marketing wiz, a prolific songwriter, a pusher of visual boundaries and a record-breaking road warrior. And she sells a ton of albums. - Billboard
Concerts in early March in Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Barbara, and Palm Desert were found "no longer financially viable" due to "significant increases in cargo and travel costs." April concerts in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Ann Arbor are unaffected. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Maria Schneider says that "the pressures in your life, good and bad, just affect music so much. ... When you look back, it's almost like a diving rod, it's telling me more about my life than I knew at the time." - Slate
"Before the curtain, an announcement: 'In the event of an air raid or siren, we ask you to adjourn to the shelter. If the air raid warning lasts less than an hour, the performance will resume.'" - The Observer (UK)
The floating psychedelic flowers of this season's Parsifal "are meant to provide the audience with 'sacred visions' of 'a world where wonder still exists,'" says director Jay Scheib. But this production also reveals a massive rift in leadership at the festival. - The New York Times
That's Samuel Mariño's goal, anyway. "I really love this music," says the 29-year-old soprano, who's appearing at Glyndebourne in Handel's Semele, "and I think if we want to keep this music alive, we have to make bridges." - BBC
Had Bennett listened to "outside noise instead of his gut, he would’ve missed out on his greatest hits, an enormous second life in his career, and a veritable collection of prolific collaborations." - Vulture
