As of November 1, the 60-year-old native of France's Alsace region will be the director of the Opéra-Comique. Among his plans are revivals of key operas that premiered there such as Carmen, The Tales of Hoffmann, and Pelléas et Mélisande. - The Violin Channel
The eureka moment was the click wheel that enabled nimble search and control without a keyboard. Jobs wanted it as small as possible, with an apocryphal tale circulating that he tossed one prototype in a fish tank, pointed at the bubbles coming out and said they indicated dead space that should be removed. - The Guardian
A costume sale for Halloween heralded the semi-return to normal for an opera house whose costume shop pivoted last year to mask-making. Cleaning out felt good: "There is another life for our stuff, and another life for our company." - Vancouver Sun
But the long-term impact of climate change - and festivals' impact on the climate - is yet to come. For large festivals, "They’re basically creating a city. . . . They have to find resources, pack in all the water, equipment . . . and then in a few days, it’s gone." - Washington Post
Li, who earned fame in the West in the '00s and became a household name in China, was arrested with a sex worker — and promptly expelled from the musicians' union, crippling his career. State TV warned that "anyone who challenges laws and social morality is doomed." - Bloomberg Quint
“It’s not untrue that these genres are a kind of record company plot to sell us music but there’s a reason why this conspiracy has been so successful: they were recognising real communities and finding ways to serve them. - The Guardian
Left for dead with the advent of CDs in the 1980s, vinyl records are now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format, with fans choosing it for collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality. - The New York Times
Writes the Columbia University linguist and New York Times columnist of Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones and William Grant Still's Highway 1, U.S.A., "the tradition being appropriated here is based on a philosophy of composition and audience reception hardly inevitable." - The New York Times
“Audiences who were very reticent or uninterested in digital content became interested. I believe we cannot turn back from that whole process.” - Dallas Morning News
Music — at least for some of us — is an engaged and engaging activity that involves your ear, your intellect, your memory, your imagination and more. And that if those resources aren’t available, there’s no shame in preferring the more serene and restful option of silence. - San Francisco Chronicle
She's music director at San Francisco Opera and principal guest conductor at Houston Grand Opera, and she's the first woman and first Asian in either job. But, she says, "I want to be seen just as a conductor." - The New York Times
Francesca Zambello, 65, who is also the artistic director of Washington National Opera and an independent stage director, will have led Glimmerglass for 12 seasons when she leaves. - The New York Times
"Initially, the priest was 'Father McCartney,' because it had the right number of syllables. I took the song to John at around that point, … and he said, 'That's great, Father McCartney.' He loved it. But I wasn't really comfortable with it." - The New Yorker
To some observers, it’s a case of campus “cancel culture” run amok. To others, the incident is symbolic of an arrogant academic and artistic old guard and of the deeply embedded anti-Black racism in classical music. - The New York Times
