"The company's roughly 300 stagehands were locked out late last year because of a disagreement over how long and lasting pandemic pay cuts would be. But the opera house is in desperate need of workers … if it is to reopen in less than three months." - The New York Times
The company’s endowment, which was $4.8 million when Executive Director David Bennett arrived in 2015, has nearly doubled to $8.8 million. - San Diego Union-Tribune
Director Keith Warner assembled a cast made up entirely of opera singers, headed by such major names as John Tomlinson, Thomas Allen, Kim Begley, Louise Alder, Emma Bell, and Susan Bullock — several of whom studied drama seriously as young adults and have been wanting to try this for some time. - The Guardian
Fired from Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2018, Gatti then had a stint as chief conductor at the Rome Opera. He now succeeds the 85-year-old Mehta as music director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, which includes the city's opera house and orchestra as well as the famous May festival. - Opera Wire
François-Xavier Roth and his orchestra, Les Siècles, like to play concerts with Rameau in the first half and Ravel in the second, or Debussy with Boulez, all on instruments from the composer's era (and, where possible, nation). Here's a Q&A where he talks about how that works and why such a band was his dream. - The New York...
On Monday night, pieces of the building flew onto the ground; water flowed down the lighting rigs and flooded parts of the stage — all while 250 people were inside listening to lieder. Company superintendent Viktor Schoner told a reporter, "I'm standing underneath the roof and getting very wet." - AP
The former soprano only became general director of the company in 2019, though she worked in administration starting in 2013 and started her career there as a resident singer in 2007. Dastoor earned quite a lot of praise for the innovative and decisive ways she moved Opera San Jose into digital media after the pandemic shut down live performance...
At one point, Zukerman told a pair of students of Asian descent that their playing was too perfect and that they needed to add soy sauce, according to two participants in the class. - The New York Times
A study undertaken over the past season by the Utah Symphony and University of Utah researchers found that a new seating arrangement could reduce the spread of aerosols by a factor of 100. The key principle? The equivalent of making a smoker sit by the window. - Smithsonian Magazine
About six weeks after announcing that, as a COVID safety measure, it would eliminate intermissions when it resumes live performances — and just over a month after critic Chris Jones issued the cry "Let the people pee without missing a note!" — the company has reversed course. - Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Musiio is just one of many hi-tech firms changing the way songs are categorised, playlisted and promoted, to eventually reach the ears of millions. They’re fast, efficient and get attention for unheard-of acts. - The Guardian
The plot calls for a lot of music: "Teenage Luca lives underwater with his fish-finned family, but when he steps out of the water and into an Italian fishing village, he becomes a human boy in the very recognizable 1960s, a time period fixed by the pop music that is frequently blaring from tiny portable radios." - Slate
And the virus killed two of the three "marimba healers" of Los Angeles, men who restored the old, cracked, broken marimbas of the area's Guatemalan community. And "in addition to taking a devastating toll on the Central American community, the pandemic shut down indoor dining at Guatemalan restaurants where marimbistas would ply their trade." Now, with vaccines, things are starting to...
"Desert In is an operatic experiment. Co-produced by Long Beach Opera and by Boston Lyric Opera, which commissioned the work, the eight-episode streaming miniseries is the brainchild of LBO Artistic Director … James Darrah, composer Ellen Reid and peña. … Episodes," each with a different composer and scriptwriters, "are just 15 to 20 minutes long, but each packs...
