The Telegraph

La Scala opera house stars take 10pc pay cut amid Italian austerity

It may not quiet make it The Beggar’s Opera, but Italy’s famed La Scala is to cut the salaries of its top directors, in line with the rest of the country’s straitened economic circumstances.

Classical Music Magazine

Myerscough report recommends cuts of 10% at BBC performing groups

The independent report, commissioned by the BBC’s director of audio and music, Tim Davie, was written by academic John Myerscough, a former special advisor on the arts to the House of Commons.

LA Times

Receipt signed by Chopin when he sold compositions is up for sale

A one-page document signed by Polish composer and pianist Frederic Chopin is on the auction block through Wednesday and has proved more popular with bidders than expected.

Drama afoot as L.A. Opera feels heat of rival works

The L.A. Opera is on challenging ground as local groups like the L.A. Phil., The Industry and Jacaranda stage inventive productions of opera and opera-like music theatre.

NY Times

Tanglewood Revisits Its Past, for All to Hear

Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox, Mass., is celebrating its 75th anniversary this summer in several big ways.

Gramophone

Las Vegas Philharmonic launches search for new music director

David Itkin will not extend his contract beyong June 2013.

LPO to perform outside the Royal Academy of Arts

Courtyard concert coincides with French Impressionism exhibition.

Spoiler Alert

Could operatic surtitles replace the programme plot synopsis to deliver real surprises?

Re-thinking Nielsen’s centennial symphony

As Nielsen’s unusual and brilliant Third Symphony turns 100, it’s about time we respect his notes as we would Mahler’s.

Jessica Duchen

Heat and light

Kicking off the Olympic cultural festivities in style, The Dude and his Simon Bolivár Orchestra of Venezuela are back in Britain. Dudamel & co are taking over the Royal Festival Hall this weekend

The Guardian

Gustavo Dudamel and London: a special relationship

The Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra conductor loves London, and London loves him back.

(Written on June 20, 2012 )

The Independent

Independent podcast: Saimir Pirgu

Quality voices will always be a rare and valued commodity. The young Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu falls into that category.

The Guardian

Saint and sinner: the Nelson Mandela opera

Tribesman, activist, icon – all the phases of Nelson Mandela’s life are o display in a new opera.

Gramophone

Bach cantata manuscript goes on public display at Christie’s in London

Rare chance to view Bach’s musical hand before ale on June 13.

New York Times

Video Preserves Hints of Future for a Director

Just out of Harvard, the director Peter Sellars made his name in the early 1980s. But what do you do when your defining work is made before you’re 30? An answer is found in Mr. Sellars’s haunting 2010 staging of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”.

Arts Journal – Slipped disc

Russians squeaks it in tight Nielsen contest

Olga Volkova, a pupil of Zakha Bron in Cologne, took first prize in the Carl Nielsen competition in Odense.

Eminent Italian maestro is dead

We’re receiving reports of the death of Piero Bellugi, music director of the RAI orchestra from 1967 and, until his death, artistic director of the opera in Palermo, Sicily.

The Times

Salonen, bringer of interactive conducting at the Science Museum

Do you ever dream of guiding the the Philharmonia through a full-blooded performance of The Planets? Dream no longer.

(Written on June 11, 2012 )

The Telegraph

Online piano star Valentina Lisitsa gets Royal Albert Hall debut

YouTube star and and virtuoso pianist Valentina Lisitsa signs record deal and will play a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Jessica Duchen

A Music World Fair

This year’s International Wimbledon Music Festival is ‘A Music World Fair’ – a tremendously international job, lighting up South West London with performances by the Kopelman String Quartet, Alina Ibragimova, Nicholas Daniel and Sam West, Christine Brewer, Zuill Bailey, Cristina Ortiz, Mark Padmore and many more.

NY Times

Philadelphia Orchestra Submits Plan to Cut Debt

The Philadelphia Orchestra has laid out its plan to erase debts and cut costs in a major step toward exiting bankruptcy court.

The Guardian

King Priam, a pacifist’s opera, can still shed light on the trauma of war

Half a century after its first showing, Michael Tippett’s libretto based on the lliad is a fitting work for today.

Fischer-Dieskau’s 12 best recordings

Martin Kettle’s pick of the great baritone’s recorded output.

LA Times

Glenn Dicterow leaving New York Philharmonic, joining USC faculty

Glenn Dicterow, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for more than 30 years, will be leaving the venerated orchestra and joining the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles.

New West Symphony names Marcelo Lehninger as new music director

Marcelo Lehninger, the young Brazilian German maestro who serves as an assistant conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has been named music director of the New West Symphony, which is based in Thousand Oaks.

Classical Music Magazine

Classical singles chart greeted with scepticism by industry

The launch of a weekly classical singles chart, the first of which will be released on 28 May, has been greeted enthusiastically by crossover artists but more sceptically by the core classical sector.

Gramophone

Anne-Sophie Mutter receives Distinguished Leadership Award

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has been awarded the Atlantic Council’s 2012 Distinguished Artistic Leadership Award, recognising her as ‘one of the most significant leaders of our society’.

(Written on May 25, 2012 )