Gérard Mortier, who is famous for painting lipstick on corpses and taking them to the ball, will become general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera after he retires from the Paris Opera at the end of the 2008-2009 season. Mortier ran the Salzburg Festival in the 1990s where he mounted such customer-unfriendly provocations as Hans Neuenfels staging of Die Fledermaus, in which Orlofsky was a drug dealer who sold cocaine, Nazi thugs appeared on stage and Eisenstein had incestuous children who commit suicide. Can’t wait to see what he does with Lulu. Reminds of one of my favorite lines,
Read moreGarden of Dreams David Maslanka Dallas Wind Symphony Jerry Junkin Writing for a large ensemble, especially a traditional, professional orchestra, can be a dangerous venture for today’s composer. Hours, days, and years (sometimes) of composition, orchestration, preparation of parts, and personal anguish over a score that may get two hours of concert hall rehearsal before a world premiere. However, should a wind ensemble ever ask for a commission, quickly say yes. Wind ensembles (symphonies, bands, etc), particularly collegiate groups, are gifted with practice time enviable by any orchestra and their directors tend to be excited about new music. Jerry Junkin
Read moreThe Metropolitan Opera announced that its co-production of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha with the English National Opera will debut next season on April 11, 2008. The ENO is doing nine performances of Satyagraha this April. Written in 1980, Satyagraha is based on Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa, as he developed his philosophy of nonviolent protest as a powerful force for change. It is the second work in the ”portrait” trilogy by Glass, which also includes Einstein on the Beach (1975) and Akhnaten (1983-84). Satyagraha involves the director Phelim McDermott and the designer Julian Crouch, two of the three artistic directors of the visionary British theater
Read moreHere’s a programming note to remember. Performance Today will broadcast Tom Myron’s Violin Concerto #2 on Tuesday’s program. The performance–by the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra–was recorded on 5/14/06 in Alexandria Virginia; Elisabeth Adkins, soloist. Performance Today is carried on 250 member stations around the country. For info on where and when you can hear the show in your area, visit www.performancetoday.org. The show will also be available for on-demand listening through the website for seven days.
Read moreWatching Olga Neuwirth’s opera Lost Highway is like watching a Harry Potter movie after having read the book: the material transfers all right, but one wishes the team behind the retelling had gone further in re-imagining the original work for a new medium. Lost Highway follows David Lynch’s movie more or less scene for scene: many images from the film get repeated on stage, and many lines from the screenplay find their way – sometimes awkwardly – into the libretto (written by Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek). Neuwirth’s principal musical conceit is to have Fred and Renee – the dull, troubled
Read moreSince it’s opera week here at Sequenza 21 and there’s a lot of chatter in the comments about transplanting operas between cultures and Galen has raised the topic of fugues in the invisible YouTube video below, it seems somehow fitting to mention that Miller Theater and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music are presenting tonight and tomorrow night the U.S. premiere of Lost Highway by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, a multimedia opera based on the weird and wacky David Lynch film of the same name. Film buffs will recall that Lynch’s film involves sex, murder and a character named Fred Madison who mysteriously becomes Pete Dayton through a
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Ferrer Salat Foundation (Spain) The Ferrer Salat Foundation was created in Barcelona in 1982 by Carlos Ferrer Salat. Its purpose is to promote contemporary classical music, and concentrates mainly on organizing the Queen Sophia Award for Musical Composition ceremony, held annually, to which the Foundation devotes all its resources. The winning composer receives a prize of 18,500 Euros, and has
Read more[youtube]1ain4qftoM[/youtube] If the video doesn’t show up here, you can view it on the actual YouTube site here.
Read moreSpeaking of great American operas, Tobias Picker has written two of them; Emmeline, which is an unqualified masterpiece, and An American Tragedy, which I think history will regard more dearly than its contemporary reviews might suggest. Between those two landmarks, Picker wrote a kind of “forgotten” opera called Thérèse Raquin, an epic based on the Zola novel which, like Tragedy, involves an unwanted lover being chucked overboard in favor of a more attractive alternative. Picker’s psychiatrist, if he has one, could probably make something of that. Thérèse Raquin premiered at The Dallas Opera in 2001 and is now having its New York premiere run, in a revised
Read moreI don’t know Ricky Ian Gordon personally but he e-mails me frequently with updates on his projects, never neglecting to sign off with “xxxooo” which I find endearing although I’m sure he does the same for all the guys. I know and like his music mainly from Audra McDonald and a wonderful recording of his songs called Bright-Eyed Joy but nothing I’ve heard or read prepared me for the universal praise for the Minnesota Opera’s production of Gordon’s (with libretto by Michael Korie) The Grapes of Wrath. What we have here, apparently, is a real contender for the title of the Great American Opera.
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