For several years during my career at The Seattle Times, I assembled the oddest classical-related stories to appear during a given year and collected them in a giant compendium of musical weirdness. And from time to time, I update them with the latest year’s follies. Here are some of the highlights of those columns.
2013
By Melinda Bargreen
As the calendar wound down for the year, we took a look backward at the more unusual news items in 2013. May you enjoy these items just as much as we've enjoyed collecting them for you. Here goes:
-- A Glass menagerie: Composer Philip Glass does it again, polarizing fans and detractors with a new opera that is either “a great American opera and the only great L.A. opera,” or a work with “a vast emptiness at its heart,” depending on whom you read. The opera, called “The Perfect American,” which explores the last days in the life of Walt Disney, may not appeal to Disney fans: according to a reviewer of the work’s Madrid debut last January, the creator of Mickey Mouse is depicted as “arrogant, misogynist, racist, tyrannical, mean, ultraconservative, uncultured, hypochondriac and megalomaniac.”
-- Classical health benefits: Dutch researchers have found that playing music may reduce your blood pressure and lower your heart rate. In a 2013 study of healthy young adults, those who practiced their instruments (piano, flute, voice, guitar) for 1.8 hours daily showed significant reductions in blood pressure. This was probably due to the musicians' higher levels of “somatosensory nerve activity,” which “beneficially modulate the autonomic nervous system.”
-- Don’t try this at home: A fire-eating stilt walker in last February’s “Die Meistersinger” at Chicago Lyric Opera ran into trouble during a dress rehearsal before an audience of about 1,000. Wesley Daniel, 24, was hospitalized but soon released after his fire-eating trick went awry. Press accounts said he was a stand-in for the original fire-eater, who stepped aside after his mustache got singed.
-- Musical gun control: A British group, the Post War Orchestra, made headlines this year by turning weapons of war into musical instruments. So far they have an electric guitar made from two rifle carcasses; six Native American flutes made from Lee Enfield Rifles carcasses; and a lyre made from a World War II steel helmet, field radio antennae, and camouflage fabric. They also have an array of percussive instruments made from ammo boxes, empty shell cases, and steel jeep wheels covered with specially treated camouflage fabric. They’re devoted to making music out of war. Unfortunately, the project failed to make its Kickstarter funding goal, but the group is still actively seeking support.
-- Was it the Titanic violin … or not? Experts are still arguing over the claim that surfaced last March, when a violin found seven years ago in an attic in Bridlington, UK, supposedly had proven "beyond a doubt" to belong to Titanic ensemble leader Wallace Hartley and to have been gone to the briny deep with him when the vessel sank. The water-stained violin has been exhaustively analyzed by forensic efforts, and it now is cautiously referred to in press reports as “A violin thought to have been played by the band leader on the Titanic as the vessel sank.” In October, that violin was claimed for ,454,400 at auction in London.
-- And you think you’ve ever been embarrassed before: How’d you like to be tenor Lance Ryan, who was supposed to star in an April production of Wagner’s Siegfried at the highly regarded Berlin Staatsoper, but failed to appear in time for the (unusually early) 4 p.m. start? Someone should have told Siegfried about the early curtain. As it happened, an announcer arrived on stage just before curtain time to declare: "We don't know where our lead tenor is." Ryan did appear in time for Act II, after the company had improvised by asking another tenor (Andreas Schager) to sing the first act from the wings while a costumed company member went through the motions. Ach du lieber.
-- Oh, those Germans! In a country famous for (let’s say) creative reinterpretations of opera, they may have gone a bridge too far in Düsseldorf, where a Nazi-oriented presentation of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” distressed some patrons so much that some required medical assistance. In this production, Tannhäuser, dressed in an SS uniform (he is intended by Wagner to be a medieval traveling minstrel) shaves the heads of and executes an entire family by stripping them and shooting them individually in the neck. In one scene, naked performers came onto the stage in smoke-filled gas chambers to kill the character Venus, dressed as an S.S. officer. In another, the character Elisabeth was brutally raped by Tannhäuser's rival Wolfram and left bloodied and crying on stage. Oddly, we didn’t find any of that in Wagner’s meticulous instructions in the opera’s score.
-- And oh, those French! A Paris Opera production of “Aida” in October was loudly booed from start to finish, despite good performances from conductor Philippe Jordan and the orchestra. Director Olivier Py gave operagoers a show they won’t forget: a young man waving the Italian flag was brutalized during the overture, while the rest of the show offered machine guns and tanks, racist demonstrators during the "Triumphal March," and a trial of Radames by the Ku Klux Klan.
-- Too much Dolly Parton: Evidently you can get thrown off a commercial flight if you refuse to stop singing … especially if you are singing “AY-eee-ay-eee-ayyyy will always love youuuuuuu.” A woman on a May 9 American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York was “disruptive” and “refused to stop singing,” and the flight diverted to Kansas City. Her favorite song: "I Will Always Love You," the Dolly Parton tune made famous by Whitney Houston in the movie "The Bodyguard." You can bet the other passengers caught this one on video.
-- A tough year for street musicians in Atlanta: First it was the violinist. Johnny Arco (stage name for Juan Pablo Chavez), who was doing a little busking in the train station. He spent five days behind bars for “misdemeanor panhandling” and “vending without a permit” for selling CDs. Then a trombonist, Eryk McDaniel, who was playing for patrons entering a Braves stadium in Atlanta as the crowds entered … until he was arrested and cited.
“I was in jail. I've never been in jail. What you do? I played trombone," said McDaniel.
McDaniel says his attorney told him he's allowed to play on the city's streets because there's an exception in the law for musicians, but he's not allowed to ask for money. McDaniel says he never said a word, but police said because he had his case out, that was enough for the arrest.
Honestly. Things are a little better in Ocean City (Maryland); read on:
-- Violinist William Hassay, Jr., who has played in professional orchestras, was arrested for making “excessive noise” while busking on the Ocean City boardwalk. He went to court and won the right to busk – as well as 1,000 in lost income, plus 05,000 in attorney fees and 1,000 in court costs -- for infringement of his freedom of speech rights.
-- A “Magic Flute” with Rhinemaidens? No, it was just a nautical misadventure at Austria’s Bregenz Opera last summer, when a boat on a floating stage overturned with some of the “Magic Flute” principals aboard. After a half-hour delay, the singers – soaking but still game – continued the show. The Queen of the Night, Kathryn Lewek, had to be rescued because it was impossible to swim in her costume (three skirts, two layers of bodice, two mic units and a heavy horned helmet).
-- Finally, don’t you hate it when a beautiful evening at the Symphony is interrupted by fortissimo coughing and hacking from the audience? So does conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. When his opening concert with the Chicago Symphony playing Mahler’s Ninth was plagued by loud coughing, he came prepared the following night. After the first movement was punctuated by even more coughing, Tilson Thomas went offstage and emerged with large handfuls of cough lozenges, which he tossed underhand into the main floor audience seats – urging audience members to pass them on to those who needed cough drops. The listeners responded with laughter and applause (and a little less coughing).
2012
By Melinda Bargreen
The year 2012 has proved a rich source of entertaining music-related news items from around the world. Grab a cup of coffee (this is greater Seattle, after all), start scrolling, and enjoy!
Everyone’s a critic: In Isparta, Turkey, a five-man panel of local officials and professional musicians assembled to judge the hopeful drummers who planned to serenade the community before sunrise daily during the holy month of Ramadan. It seems that standards for this 500-year-old tradition have been slipping, and local authorities have gotten complaints that unqualified percussionists were ruining things with poor rhythm, bad melody and aggressive demands for cash donations. Now the drummers have to pass an exam and get a laminated license card, complete with picture and identity number. Eleven hopeful drummers were turned down on the grounds of "substandard rhythm," "poor knowledge of traditional songs," and "an inability to perform under pressure." “We don't want amateurs here," said Cinar Helioglu, Isparta's police chief, head of the judging panel.
Going Gaga: Pop diva Lady Gaga cancelled her show in Indonesia last June amid threats from Muslim fundamentalists, who had threatened violence if Lady Gaga went ahead with her “Born This Way Ball” concert in the world's most populous Muslim country. Officials said her sexy clothes and provocative dance moves could corrupt the young, and police refused to issue the necessary permits unless she agreed to tone things down. She didn’t. They didn’t.
Opera on eBay: It was a bold experiment. Dutch opera impresario Peter Kroone, famous for his casts-of-thousands arena opera extravaganzas produced by his company, Companions Opera Amsterdam. Deciding to retire, he offered (for a limited time only!) his sets, costumes and props on eBay – including stagings of Aida, Carmen, Nabucco, Traviata, Turandot, Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, all available to the highest bidder. (The offer ended March 21.) A sample listing from Traviata includes chandeliers, complete with light bulbs; the garden house; 101 blue-seated chairs; 101 red-seated chairs; and a full complement of costumes (designs by AZIZ), including 80 hair accessories ("of all colors"). Aida, complete with costumes for the cast of 500, was the first to go up for auction. Sadly, none of the bids met the reserve (Aida got the top bid of 1,100, but that wasn’t sufficient). Want to start your own opera company? -- at this writing the productions are still for sale: you can reach Kroone at http://www.operaforsale.com/ or operaforsale@gmail.com.
Brahms away: Violence erupted in the box seats at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra right in the middle of the Brahms Symphony No. 2. While Riccardo Muti was conducting the orchestra, two audience members started throwing punches. A 30-year-old-man began punching a 67-year-old-man over an apparent dispute about seat assignments in the box. The aggressor of the fight fled before the police arrived, and the victim escaped with a small gash on his head, which was tended to by paramedics.
“We heard a rather loud thump,” said Steve Robinson, general manager of Chicago’s classical and folk music station 98.7 WFMT, who was at the performance. “It wasn’t so loud that everyone jumped up and ran for the exits.”
The concert continued during the fight. According to news accounts, Muti “did give the men a dirty look as he continued on with the third movement.”
Dinged at the Ring: Opera director Robert Lepage was seriously bummed by the reception of his Götterdämmerung staging, the final installment of the Met's new Ring (which is the most expensive production ever seen on the Met stage, at over 6 million). Built around a 45-ton contraption made up of 24 gigantic planks that move independently on a central axis, the set utilizes computerized projections to display the forests, rivers, and caverns required by the Ring. The set got a particularly snarky reception in the press, as seen in Anthony Tommasini’s response (in The New York Times) to some modifications: “Attention! Ring alert from the Met! Now as Valhalla goes up in flames, the heads on white marble statues of the gods no longer go “pop” and explode. Instead, they crumble into pieces, and I think we can all agree that this is a more dignified way to suggest the twilight of the gods.” Lepage has been getting plenty of disrespect over the course of this production: after opening night of Die Walküre, the cast and conductor were cheered lustily, but Lepage and his team were booed. The singers are praised for the work he has drawn out of them, he told one interviewer, then "suddenly you're just the guy who has this big set that makes noise."
2011 (This one contains general arts items, as well as classical music, at the request of Seattle Times editors.)
It’s Christmastime, and now that you’ve unwrapped that hideous tie from your brother-in-law and swallowed that last bite of turkey, perhaps it is time to consider some real turkey. We refer to the highly enjoyable foibles of the arts world in 2011, collected here for you as a Christmas gift to remind you that your relatives around the holiday table are not, after all, the weirdest people in the world.
Consider the following, and the fact that a brand new year soon awaits us.
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Bayreuth Gone Wild: At the renowned Bayreuth Festival in Germany, the new Wagnerian “Ring” marking Wagner’s bicentenary in 2013 will be directed by Frank Castorf, whom one reviewer called “the ‘enfant terrible’ of the German theater scene”. Previous Castorf presentations have included a vomiting Trojan horse and a machine gun in “Die Meistersinger,” not to mention throwing paint at the audience and requiring actors to scream through an entire production. Bring on the “Ring”; we can’t wait!
But they will have to work to beat Sebastian Baumgarten’s staging of “Tannhauser” this year at Bayreuth, a show that featured Tannhauser in his underwear, the heroine Elisabeth entering a recycling center and disintegrating herself, copulating animals in a cage, and members of the audience sitting on the stage. Noted tenor/conductor Placido Domingo commented on the show: “"I have a problem with it," Domingo said, referring to the production aesthetic. "It's incomprehensible.”
The emperor’s brand-new wardrobe: A new project called the “Museum of Non-Visible Art,” of which actor James Franco is a patron, is based (according to NPR’s Eyder Peralta) on the concept that “the works of art don't exist physically, instead they are imagined by the artist. So when you purchase the ‘work of art’ you get a ‘card’ to hang on an empty wall and you ‘describe it to your audience.’
We think we’ll “hang on to our wallet.”
Conduct him to the exit: Moscow’s culture minister has fired Mark Gorenstein, music director of the Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra for the past nine years – during which 280 musicians were either fired or left voluntarily. (A symphony orchestra usually has about 90 players, so this is quite a turnover.) Earlier this year, Gorenstein was fired by the Tchaikovsky Competition for making a racial slur about Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan in front of the cellist (who went on to win the gold medal).
Don’t rile up those church musicians: In Mobile County, Alabama, last August, a minister of music at a church in the St. Elmo community zapped the pastor who had just fired him with a Taser gun. Several church members became involved, including Agolia Moore, the music minister’s mother, who suffered a stab wound at the hands of a deacon.
Another church choir – the Frazer United Methodist Church Youth Choir of Montgomery, Alabama – got into trouble for spontaneously singing the National Anthem in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building last July. They were advised by security that it was against the law to sing without a permit in the building.
Know when to fold ‘em: Art in General, an alternative art space at 79 Walker Street in Tribeca, opened a new exhibition last month called "I'll Raise You One..." in which a group of people sit in the gallery's storefront window space and play strip poker for all to see. The curator had to turn people away because his call for participants received such a large response (50.participants were chosen).
Dressing for success: At the Hollywood Bowl last summer, the pianist Yuja Wang wore a dress that “was so short and tight that had there been any less of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not accompanied by an adult.” (This from Los Angeles Times reviewer Mark Swed.)
Maybe there were too many high notes: China’s one-year-old Guangzhou Opera House is falling apart, with large cracks in the walls and ceilings of the 10 million structure, and large glass and granite panels falling off. It was designed by architect Zaha Hadid and resoundingly praised in The New York Times.
Scalping Leonardo: London’s National Gallery is fuming over the resale of tickets to its blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci exhibition (through Feb. 5), considered the most complete display of Leonardo’s work ever shown and (according to BBC News) featuring seven paintings that have never been seen in public before. The exhibition tickets (about 5 US) are now being resold on sites such as eBay for up to about 19 US. The gallery is contacting resale websites to request that they “stop immediately.”
How about a bargain Strad? An Irishman who reportedly stole a Stradivarius violin worth about .9 million US tried to sell it for about 32 US to a man sitting next to him in a London Internet café. The accused thief, John Maughan, snatched the fiddle from violinist Min-Jin Kym as she ate in a fast-food restaurant. According to court records, the Internet café offer was refused because the man’s daughter “already had a recorder.”
A long way from Rapid City: South Dakota-born David Hallberg, the first American member of the legendary 235-year-old Bolshoi Ballet, starred in a new production of “The Sleeping Beauty” – but his coup got a snarky response from Bolshoi premier dancer Nikolay Tsiskaridze, who called Hallberg’s casting “an insult to the entire Russian ballet, a demonstration of indifference to the rich Russian tradition and culture.” Tsiskaridze, by the way, is ethnically Georgian.
Genuine Eurotrash: American conductor Carl St. Clair resigned his post as music director of Berlin’s Komische Oper over a new production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.”
St. Clair said the “eurotrash” designation was appropriate for this production, which “… is literally about trash. The principal prop of Daniel Cremer’s set is a shipping container with an oppressive array of plastic garbage bags and other debris in and around it. It can’t be overemphasized just how ugly this production is.”
2010
By Melinda Bargreen
The clock is ticking toward the end of the year, and it’s once again time for the classical-music Believe It or Not lineup of those “stranger than fiction” items making the news in 2010.
-- It’s not over until the “plump” lady sings: Well-known Italian soprano Daniela Dessi walked out of a production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” when 86-year-old stage director Franco Zeffirelli made critical comments about her size and age. “A woman of a certain age and plumpness is not credible in the character of Violetta,” said the famous film and opera director to the 52-year-old Dessi, who weighed 143 lbs. We have to say that Dessi’s photos do not suggest a chubette diva. Gianluigi Gelmetti, chief conductor of the Rome Opera, stood up for Dessi, declaring “her appearance pleases me as a man.”
-- More Traviata woes: A few months later, conductor Leonard Slatkin ran amok in the Metropolitan Opera’s “La Traviata” (also designed by Zeffirelli), of which New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini observed, “I have seldom heard such faulty coordination between the conductor and the cast at the Met.” Slatkin, who noted in his blog that he had never conducted “Traviata” before, was replaced in subsequent performances.
-- Obamopera: A German-American musical called “Hope,” recounting the story of Obama’s election, premiered last January in Frankfurt, with singing actors portraying Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin (whose character is featured in the number “Soccer Mom Pit Bull”), and a love duet for Barack and Michelle. Critics were underwhelmed: “Parts of it are so silly they have to be seen to be believed.”
-- Roll over, Beethoven: It’s not enough that poor Beethoven was dug up twice (1863, 1888) following his 1827 death in Vienna. His skull is still unburied, and its owner, California businessman Paul Kaufmann, offered the skull (or portions of it) for sale early in 2010. How did Kaufmann get this artifact? His great-great uncle was a physician involved in the 1863 exhumation of Beethoven, and the doctor kept Beethoven's skull. Kaufmann said he hoped the skull would find a permanent home in a museum.
-- The Invisible Siegfrieds: LA’s Wagnerian “Ring” (May 29-June 26) was heralded by a four-day piece of performance art, “Invisible Siegfrieds Marching Sunset Boulevard.” Created by composer Georg Nussbaum, this event had volunteers wearing camouflage helmets marching down Sunset Boulevard in walks of the same duration as each of the four “Ring” operas. “My Siegfrieds are not invisible in reality,” helpfully explained Nussbaum. “It's about the imagination — like children when they close their eyes and claim to be gone."
-- The very visible Siegfried: That same 2 million production of the “Ring” drew rare pre-performance gripes from two of the leading singers, the Siegfried (British tenor John Treleaven) and Brünnhilde (Linda Watson), both of whom criticized director Achim Freyer’s production as “artistically flawed and physically dangerous.” (The latter claim was due to the steeply “raked” or tilted stage, which caused slips and falls.)
-- The Junkestra: Last May, San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall was covered in garbage: sewer pipes, bathroom fixtures, dresser drawers and other bits of detritus. Percussionists played these objects (scavenged from the San Francisco Dump) in “Junkestra,” a new 12-minute piece by composer Nathaniel Stookey. He explained, “It’s really not just a bunch of banging.”
-- Who said conducting wasn’t a sport?: The L.A. Philharmonic’s exuberant young maestro, Gustavo Dudamel, “lunged energetically” on the podium during a Dvorak performance in May and “heard a loud pop,” according to press reports. He had pulled a muscle in his neck. And veteran 82-year-old conductor Kurt Masur took a wrong step during his bows in an Essen (Germany) concert last spring, falling off the podium; he was shaken, but luckily not injured. Maybe this is the time to hand the baton to Honda’s humanoid robot, “Asimo,” which “conducted” the opener of a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert last May.
-- Guess he didn’t like it: British critic Michael White, who blogs for Britain’s “Telegraph,” wrote of last April’s premiere of Philip Glass’ new violin concerto, “The American Four Seasons”: “This new concerto is unmitigated trash: the usual strung out sequences of arpeggiated banality, driven by the rise and fall of fast-moving but still leaden triplets, and vacuously formulaic.”
-- Mozart stimulates the … sewage? Yes, head of a German sewage plant has introduced piped Mozartian music to stimulate the activity of microbes that break down waste. Anton Stucki, Swiss-born chief operator of the sewage centre in Treuenbrietzen, believes the chords and cadences of the compositions speed up the way the organisms work and lead to a quicker breakdown of biomass.
"We think the secret is in the vibrations of the music, which penetrate everything,” Stucki says. “ Mozart managed to transpose universal laws of nature into his music. It has an effect on people of every age and every cultural background. So why not on microbes? After all, they're living organisms just like us."
-- Cello, first class: Cellist Greg Beaver (of the Chiara String Quartet) was thrown off a United Airlines flight from Denver to LaGuardia last summer when attendants told him he had to buy a ,052 first-class ticket for his cello or take a different flight. The cello, which already had a 29 coach ticket and its own boarding pass, was barred from coach when the gate attendant protested that it wouldn’t fit in the seat. (The cello had fit just fine in a coach seat on the same type of aircraft, a Boeing 757, a few weeks earlier.) Checking the 300-year-old instrument, which Beaver said “is worth as much as a small house,” was not an option.
-- Finally, a new Hans Neuenfels production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” opened the 2010 Bayreuth Festival with a show featuring most of the cast as rats in a laboratory. We’re pretty sure that’s just what Wagner had in mind.
2009
News of the weird, from the classical music world: Conductor David Ott fell into an orchestra pit; composer Curtis Hughes wrote an opera about Sarah Palin; and baritone Bryn Terfel forgot his pants in 2009.
We all knew classical music had its weird side. Here’s proof.
KAREN SNYDER PHOTOGRAPHY
Aliana de la Guardia as Sarah Palin in Guerilla Opera's production of "Say It Ain't So, Joe."
Related
As 2009 slips away, it's once again time for ... the Classical Music Believe It or Not! And while the calendar marches toward 2010, may you enjoy the follies of the past year, with tidbits gleaned from actual news items, just as much as we've enjoyed collecting them for you. Here goes:
Leaping from the stage: It's been quite a year for spectacular stage accidents. Conductor David Ott survived a 14-foot fall at the University of West Florida in September, returning to the orchestra pit after a performance when the lights were off and plummeting into the basement below the pit. He miraculously avoided serious injuries.
Earlier, soprano Ana Maria Martinez fell headfirst into the orchestra pit during a performance of "Rusalka" at Britain's illustrious Glyndebourne Opera, landing on a luckless cellist. Martinez also suffered no ill effects.
Less fortunate, however, was mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, whose tumble at London's Royal Opera House during "The Barber of Seville" ended in a broken fibula. She gamely carried on to finish the performance, later continuing in a wheelchair and cast for the remaining shows.
Singing to the cows: Italian tenor Marcello Bedoni has been singing operatic selections to cows in Lancashire, England, on the theory that "soothing sounds or music can reduce stress" (according to the National Farmers' Union). Bedoni calls the cows "a great audience." Presumably they remember to shut off their cellphones beforehand.
Watch those batons: A 17-year-old California girl used her marching-band baton to beat off two muggers who grabbed her coat and demanded money several months ago. She punched one in the nose, kicked the other in the groin, and beat them both with her band baton before running away. You don't mess with the marching band.
Really Terrible Orchestra: You don't mess with the Really Terrible Orchestra, either, without incurring the wrath of founder (and novelist) Alexander McCall Smith. The Edinburgh-based orchestra, founded in 1995 and billed as the world's worst, has trademarked its name to fend off attempts by rival tribute orchestras to cash in on its reputation. The RTO claims its success is due to short performances and free wine for listeners. McCall Smith says, "It does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the orchestra have been discovered to be playing different pieces of music by different composers, at the same time. We are The Really Terrible Orchestra and we shall go on and on."
An opera about ... Sarah Palin? The much-parodied voice of Sarah Palin has inspired composer Curtis Hughes to write an opera ("Say It Ain't So, Joe"), for the Boston-based Guerilla Opera. Based on "the exact pitches that were spoken" during the Palin-Biden debates in last year's Presidential campaign, the opera also features Joe the Plumber, for whom Hughes says his "word-painting tends to get a little more crass." Hughes told one interviewer, "One of [Palin's] arias concludes with her informing the audience, 'I am your future.' I'd like to think that the music at this moment could be understood as either ominous or joyful, or perhaps both." Perhaps.
"Twitterdammerung": Yes, it's billed as "the first Twitter opera," premiered in September at London's Royal Opera House, based on some 900 tweets and predictably panned as "a cheap gimmick" — though one reviewer cited "humour by the bucket load." One can only imagine.
We can hardly wait: China is planning a new opera version of Marx's 1,000-page "Das Kapital," with an economist overseeing the project to "ensure that it remains intellectually respectful of Marxist doctrine." Count us in for opening night!
Another violin left in the cab: Psychologists might have a field day with the long list of major musicians who have left ultravaluable instruments behind in taxicabs. To that list we now add New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, who left the orchestra's 1727 Guarneri del Gesù violin in a New York taxi last February. The cabbie quickly arranged for the violin's return. Not to be outdone, South Korean-born virtuoso Hahn-Bin left his 18th-century Giovanni Francesco Pressenda violin in a Manhattan yellow cab after an August performance. Fortunately, the cab had a GPS tracker, and the instrument returned to Hahn-Bin, who cried, "My baby!"
The baritone forgets ... his pants?: Yes, noted baritone Bryn Terfel set out for the concert hall from his Seoul hotel wearing a pair of shorts, but forgetting to pack his concert trousers for the evening's performance last April. Arriving with just minutes to spare, and with no time to return to the hotel for his clothes, Terfel was saved by a speedy loan from a South Korean opera lover the same size as the 6'4" singer. Sort of gives a new meaning to the phrase, "Flying by the seat of one's pants.
The curse of the Ring: The Metropolitan Opera had its hands full this past spring with Wagner's four-opera epic, "The Ring of the Nibelung," when the company had to find three substitute singers for the key role of Brünnhilde. It also needed last-minute replacements for four other important roles, as well as a last-minute conductor when James Levine got sick.
Los Angeles also experienced unpleasant Ringing sensations, when the 2 million production suffered a computer glitch, causing a malfunction in the Nibelungs' cavern. And at Seattle Opera's "Ring," another computer problem twice delayed the start of scenes in the finale, "Götterdämmerung." Opera fans were heard to utter "Götterdämmerit."
Department of operatic excesses: A Berlin production of Gluck's "Armida" in April featured scenes of bondage, rape, simulated sex, murder, a live python and several naked bodybuilders. Meanwhile, over in Cologne, a third of the cast walked out of rehearsals for a violent staging of "Samson and Delilah," reportedly claiming that "the scenes of rape and massacre [were] making them sick." The Berlin patrons, accustomed to the outré, responded with "polite applause," according to news reports, but in Cologne many ticketholders wanted their money back.
Roll on, Beethoven: A Caltech computer-systems grad student named Virgil Griffith has used Facebook data to measure the musicians most often listed as a user's "favorite music" against the average SAT score for the school the user attended. At the top: Beethoven (average SAT score 1371, out of a possible 1600); at the bottom: Lil Wayne (889). Don't tell us you're surprised.
The hazards of teaching: Last February, a 13-year-old Italian schoolboy stabbed his violin teacher with a kitchen knife during a lesson at a middle school near Venice, leaving the knife embedded in the teacher's back when he ran away after the attack. Music teachers, it may be time for those Kevlar vests.
2008
By Melinda Bargreen
Now that 2008 has slipped gently over the horizon, and all of the “Ten Best” lists have hit print, it’s time once again for a list of the year’s notable follies and foibles in the realm of music. A salute, and a crash of the timpani, to the following:
-- Not a great time to fall: In-line skating is terrific fun, but perhaps not when you’ve just been named the new first violinist of the fabled Juilliard String Quartet. Nicholas Eanet, 36, promptly broke his left wrist while skating “in a euphoric state” after telling his good news to his former teacher. The break occurred in October; he’s expected to get well by July 8, when the quartet plays Chicago’s Ravinia Festival.
-- An even worse time to fall: Pity 26-year-old David Garrett, who fell down a flight of stairs after the end of a London concert, and landed on his 290-year-old Stradivarius, the “San Lorenzo.” The badly damaged instrument will cost more than 00,000 to repair – and it may never sound the same.
-- “The Fly” takes a nosedive: Few critics were enthusiastic, but French reviewers were particularly withering about the premiere of the opera “The Fly,” with music by film composer Howard Shore (“Lord of the Rings”). “Le Figaro” reviewer Christian Merlin called the opera “a monotonous mess,” adding that he was "so bored we strongly suspected the parasitic presence of the tsetse fly” (the bloodsucking African insect that causes sleeping sickness).
-- When is music noise? The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra dropped the world premiere of Swedish-Israeli composer Dror Feiler's “Halat Hisar” (State of Siege) from a concert because it was "adverse to the health" of its musicians, according to the orchestra manager. Members of the 100-strong orchestra said they needed to wear headphones while rehearsing the piece, and several reported buzzing in the ears for hours after rehearsals. The 20-minute composition “starts with the rattle of machine-gun fire and gets louder,” according to England’s The Guardian.
-- Extreme noise: In August, a Los Angeles man was accused of killing his neighbor for playing loud music. Reymondo Serrato, 58, a resident of the suburb of Pacoima, reportedly got into a fight with his neighbor over the latter’s music volume levels, finally shooting him.
-- “Not the Messiah”: Humorist Eric Idle (of “Monty Python” fame) redid Handel’s “Messiah” last summer at Wolf Trap (near Washington, D.C.), adding Scottish ballads, Sondheim, doo-wop, John Philip Sousa and lots more. This 21st-century oratorio also included a Bob Dylan imitation, a troupe of bagpipers, three stuffed sheep and a musical leaf-blower. No dead parrot, but three enthusiastic curtain calls.
-- We hope this isn’t part of the bailout: Ford launched a 2008 European advertising campaign featuring an orchestra whose members played 21 instruments made from parts of a Ford Focus, including a “clutch guitar” and a “window harp.” Wonder whether the orchestra gets better mileage.
-- Car as the star: Meanwhile, in Berlin, a new stage show featured two men strolling onstage and destroying an Opel Kadet E with sledgehammers, saws and other implements, while performing “automotive percussion” in bossa nova and other rhythms. There’s also some pre-recorded orchestral music, reportedly (according to the Berliner Zeitung) because no classical-music group has agreed to share a stage with performer Christian von Richthofen and his partner.
-- Dangerous bagpipes: Amateur bagpiper Andrew Aitken faced arrest when he decided to play some traditional Scottish tunes in Beijing on the day of the Olympics opening ceremony. Chinese security forces reportedly thought the bagpipes were a bomb, and moved to arrest Aitken before a nearby tour guide explained the instrument was not usually lethal.
-- Dame Kiri Attacks: Opera diva Dame Kiri te Kanawa had withering words for crossover celebrity singers who rise to stardom in the so-called “popera” vein: “They are all fake singers, they sing with a microphone.” Singling out her fellow New Zealander, the young Hayley Westenra, for criticism, Dame Kiri sniffed: “She’s not in my world. She has never been in it at all.”
-- Heartless: Nearly every year, some long-dead major music personage gets exhumed in the interests of science. Last year it was the turn of Frederic Chopin, who died young in 1849, reportedly of tuberculosis. Some researchers want to test Chopin’s heart, however, to find out whether he really died of cystic fibrosis. The Polish government demurs. The heart, preserved in a jar of cognac, currently rests in a Warsaw church. (The rest of Chopin, by the way, is interred in Paris.)
-- The mouse that roared? Last April, the New York Metropolitan Opera was cited by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene after a routine restaurant inspection at the Met, where the department found "evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or nonfood areas." You might want to bring your own snacks along.
-- The Tristan Curse: The Met has had more than its share of problems with its “Tristan und Isolde” production, including many illnesses and substitutions, but the show entered a new disaster level last March – when tenor Gary Lehman slid headfirst down the tilted stage and right into the prompter’s box, where there was an open flame. He was unhurt.
-- Anna Nicole Smith: The Opera. Composer Richard Thomas is hard at work on the libretto for an opera about the late Playboy centerfold and tabloid star, to be premiered in 2010 at London’s Royal Opera House. Thomas, who admitted the subject matter might be considered “trashy,” added that Ms. Smith’s story is “very operatic and sad.” Meanwhile, Opera Magazine accused the company of “having a midlife crisis” in its attempts to play to younger audiences.
-- The case of the missing organ: the Royal Opera House got into a fracas over a missing male organ in its advertisements for a production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” when the company used an airbrushed picture of Argentinean actor Juan Pablo Di Pace. The affronted Di Pace complained, according to a spokesman, who observed that, “to Juan’s embarrassment, his penis had been airbrushed out.” The company agreed to stop using the image.
-- And one more for the Royal Opera House, which was clearly on a roll last year: the nude calendar, in which men and women artists and backstage staff stripped to raise money for cancer support. Two members of the orchestra, a harpist and a violinist, posed wearing nothing but their instruments. Also featured: ballet dancers, singers, a stage manager, a costumer, and a pointe ballet shoe mistress, among others. The calendar, which can be purchased with either a male or a female cover photo, sells for 10 pounds, or about 4.43 (http://www.roh.org.uk/merchandise/display.aspx?id=562&showcase=102&category=422).
-- The excitement is building: 2008 heralded the performance of the sixth chord in a projected 639-year performance of the late John Cage’s organ work, “As Slowly As Possible.” This past summer, officials in Halberstadt, Germany, moved the weights holding down the pedals of an organ in the town's medieval church on Saturday, changing to the sixth chord change in Cage's piece. The weights will hold those notes until the next change – which means the sound can be heard in the church all the time. The last chord is expected to be heard in 2640: make those travel plans now!
2004
By Melinda Bargreen
It’s time for. . . The Classical Music Believe It or Not! And as we wend our way into 2005, may you enjoy the follies of the past year, taken from the world’s legitimate news items, just as much as we’ve enjoyed collecting them for you. Here goes:
-- Arizona Opera offers tickets for blood: a partnership between United Blood Services, Arizona's largest nonprofit community blood supplier, and the Arizona Opera provided a voucher for two Arizona Opera tickets for people who donated blood at designated sites on two days in September. You’ve heard of opera tickets that cost an arm and a leg, but a pint of blood?
-- Music causes lung damage: Researchers have discovered that really loud music isn’t just hard on the ears and the neighbors; it can also collapse a lung. Reporting in the medical journal Thorax, they describe the cases of four young men who suffered a lung collapse -- technically called pneumothorax -- that appeared to be triggered by loud music. Three of the men were at a concert or club when the pneumothorax occurred, while the fourth was in his car, which was outfitted with a 1,000-watt bass box because he ‘liked to listen to loud music,’” the report said.
So what is a pneumothorax? A small rupture in a lung allows air to leak into the space between the lungs and the chest wall, causing the lung to collapse. Symptoms include breathlessness and chest pain on the affected side. In severe cases, doctors must insert a chest tube to allow the air to escape the chest cavity.
-- Bare butt in Brazil: In Brazil, a theater director who moons an audience is just performing “an exercise in freedom of expression.” That’s what happened when director Gerald Thomas pulled down his pants before the booing audience after a Rio de Janeiro performance of “Tristan und Isolde.” In August, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that Thomas’ behavior was not obscene – though it might give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Full moon over Rio.”
-- Going bananas: Musicians at the Music@Menlo chamber music festival are among those wolfing down the bananas backstage. And why? Bananas contain trytophan, a protein the body converts to the relaxant serotonin, and thus they are believed to act a little like the beta-blocker Inderal – a very common drug used among musicians to combat stage fright.
-- And speaking of bananas: Rowdy chimps at Honolulu Zoo stopped attacking each other when tapes featuring lullabies and heartbeat sounds were played outside their cages. The same tapes, used in 8,000 special-care baby wards in the U.S., enabled infants to leave on average 12 days earlier than before the music was introduced. That’s not all; BBC World Service reports that when a supermarket owner in Leicester, England started playing French accordion tunes and German "oompah" songs, wine sales from both countries shot up. See, you knew accordions were good for something.
-- Cage gets the last laugh: Ever been in one of those avant-garde music performances that you thought would never end? You could be in an abandoned church in the German town of Halberstadt, where last July the world's longest concert moved two notes closer to its end: Three years down, 636 to go. A specially built organ, with three of its keys held down by weights, has been playing three notes since February of 2003 in a work by the late John Cage called “Organ2/ASLSP” (or “Organ Squared/As Slow As Possible”). In July, two more notes were added. The concert began Sept. 5, 2001 — the day Cage would have turned 89. The composition starts with a silence, and the only sound for a first 1½ years was air. The first notes were played in February 2003. The next change arrives in March 2006, when two notes will be taken away. Don’t believe us? Check it out at www.john-cage.halberstadt.de.
-- Bring on the porkers: Live pigs were auditioned at Germany’s Krefeld-Mönchengladbach Theater as potential extras for a new production of Flotow’s 19th-century comic opera “Martha.” Director Bernd Motti assured all the aspiring porkers: “No prior operatic stage experience is necessary.”
-- What a year it’s been for poor Mozart! He has been dead since 1791, but no one is letting the composer (or his relatives) rest in peace.
First we have a Berlin production of his opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” set in a brothel, featuring prostitutes, full-frontal nudity, drugs and sadistic violence. “When the prostitutes were massacred on stage I had to leave,” said a representative of Komische Oper Berlin sponsor DaimlerChrysler. The opera company, however has reported “strong turnouts.”
Then, a British TV documentary (“What Made Mozart Tic?”) suggested that Mozart’s works were influenced by the obsessive-compulsive disorder Tourette's syndrome, which can cause uncontrollable swearing or twitching. The evidence, according to British composer James McConnel (who has Tourette’s), lies in Mozart’s bawdy letters and song titles, some of which were “absolutely disgusting.”
Meanwhile, scientists have exhumed the bodies of some of Mozart’s relatives interred in St. Sebastian's Cemetery in Salzburg – his father, Leopold; his maternal grandmother; and Jeanette, the 16-year-old daughter of his sister Nannerl. And why? To determine whether DNA evidence supports the contention that a skull currently held at the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg is indeed that of the composer.
And finally, a fingerprint was found on a letter dating to the mid-1700s that appeared to have been written by Leopold Mozart, Mozart’s composer father. Apparently the print was accidental, likely made when the writer got ink on his finger. “One doesn't find a fingerprint from Leopold Mozart every day,” said Erich Marx, director of Salzburg's Carolino Augusteum museum, in a masterpiece of understatement.
-- Donald Rumsfeld set to music: The sometimes cryptic utterances of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld have inspired San Francisco musicians to set his words to chamber music. Among the top hits: “The Unknown,” a song which includes the following lyrics:
“As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns.”
These words, and plenty more, are sung by soprano Elender Wall, with pianist/composer Bryant Kong. We know you’ll want to get this self-published CD. Try http://www.stuffedpenguin.com/.
-- Maria Callas was poisoned? Noted film director Franco Zeffirelli, who knew the late diva prior to her death in Paris 27 years ago at age 53, now has made a film of her last days called “Callas Forever.” He suggests that Callas didn’t die of a heart attack, but rather was poisoned by a pianist, Vasso Devetzi (who has since died), who wanted to inherit her £5 million fortune (.7 million).
“Devetzi was giving Maria sleeping pills and amphetamines the whole time. It is legitimate to think that Devetzi killed Maria and then stole everything she had,” Zeffirelli told one interviewer.
“Why else would Devetzi have her body cremated immediately after the funeral service? Maria hated the idea of being cremated. Was it because Devetzi was covering her tracks?”
-- Is Disney Hall too darned hot? The mirror-like steel walls of Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, may be partially sandblasted in order to reduce glare that has reportedly increased summertime heat in nearby buildings – and temporarily blinded passing motorists.
-- Those unruly conductors: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra music director Daniele Gatti, on tour in Naples, Florida, shocked his audience last February when he interrupted his standing-ovation curtain calls to deliver a diatribe instead of an encore. According to one listener, Gatti’s tirade could be translated as: “The acoustics suck. The stage sucks. The placement of his orchestra on stage sucked.”
The Naples Daily News riposted by calling him a “pretentious, angry little twit.”
-- Don’t call me darling: The politically correct English National Opera issued an edict advising staff against using typically theatrical terms of address such as “darling,” because this “may constitute sexual harassment.”
An ENO spokesman explained, “Whilst it may be acceptable between friends, it would be thought of very differently if the term is used by a senior colleague and accompanied by a wink.” Heaven forfend, darling.
-- Swedish researchers build cardboard piano: And it sounds pretty good, apparently. The piano uses integrated circuits pressed onto paper, rather than circuit boards or silicon chips. The piano has all 88 keys; pressing one sends a signal to an external loudspeaker, which plays the correct sound.
-- And finally, some really good news: The French government's industry minister has approved a decision to let cinemas, concert halls and theaters install cell phone jammers -- on condition that emergency calls can still get through. Finally, a jam session welcome by classical-music fans. Let’s get those jammers into our concert halls without delay!
2005
Odd birds and strange goings-on in classical music world, 2005
By Melinda Bargreen
Classical music has a rather staid reputation in some circles, but a look at the worldwide news items from the past year suggests the "longhairs" are just as crazy as everyone else. Once again, it's time for ... Melinda's Believe It or Not, an assemblage of real music news from the past 12 months. As you read on, you will find ample proof that truth is indeed stranger than fiction — even on the classical side.
Pavarotti Plans Three Tenors Reunion: Despite repeated "retirements," superannuated supertenor Luciano Pavarotti hasn't really retired yet. Before he does, he plans to have "one or two" reunions with the two other Three Tenors (Plácido Domingo and José Carreras), possibly even this summer in conjunction with the Football World Cup, the sporting event that first spawned the trio in 1990. The 70-year-old singer (who had to be assisted onto the stage to make the above announcement) says he's going to tour for "a year or two" more before stepping down to spend more time with his 2-year-old daughter.
"Nancy and Tonya: The Opera": Darned if the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding figure-skating scandal isn't destined for an opera house near you. (Not too near, we hope.) The 11-year-old story, in which Harding's henchman clobbered the more successful Kerrigan in the knee before the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, is the basis for a libretto by Elizabeth Searle. Tufts University grad student Abigail Al Dorry is writing the music, and the opera will be performed at Tufts next spring. Stay tuned.
Ulysses S. Grant: The Opera: Washington National Opera's training program has commissioned a new opera by composer Scott Wheeler about Ulysses S. Grant ("Democracy: An American Comedy"), and it opens with President Grant and his wife Julia in the White House celebrating their 25th anniversary. Frankly, Nancy and Tonya are starting to sound pretty good.
"Jerry Springer: The Opera": The BBC received 40,000 complaints before it even began the broadcast of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" last January, after church groups requested that the musical not be aired. Based on Springer's talk show, the work features such titles as "Pregnant by a Transsexual" and "Here Come the Hookers," plus a hefty barrage of a reported 8,000 expletives. The most controversial scene reportedly has Jesus wearing a diaper and declaring he's "a bit gay."
Moammar Gaddafi: The Rap Opera: The English National Opera announced that it will open its 2006-07 season with a new opera about the Libyan dictator by the dance/hip-hop collective Asian Dub Foundation, with a rapper playing Gaddafi and an all-female chorus of bodyguards. The mind boggles. And also at the English National ...
Brünnhilde Was a Suicide Bomber: Controversy ruled this year at the English National Opera's "Ring," where the staging of Wagner's four-opera masterpiece included scenes of pole dancing, gang rape and multiple stabbings. The culminating coup was at the end of the fourth opera, when Brünnhilde straps explosives to her body and detonates herself (a scene described as "utterly crass" in The Guardian).
There's Cocaine in My Opera Set: We knew "La Traviata" has a big party scene, but who would have figured that British customs agents would find 11 kilos of cocaine hidden in the sets and costumes of Opera Ireland's production of that opera? The production was being trucked from Germany to Dublin when the white stuff was discovered.
Let's Re-Bury Rachmaninoff: Folks just can't let those composers rest in piece. Last year, it was Mozart's relatives who were being exhumed for DNA testing. This year, Oscar-winning Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov called for the return of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's remains (1873-1943) from the U.S. for burial in Russia. Rachmaninoff, who fled the Russian Revolution in 1917, is buried — for now — in Valhalla, N.Y.
Tough Year for Mozart: On the eve of the composer's 250th birth anniversary in 2006, thieves and vandals have been unusually active. A life-size wax head of Mozart worth 8,400 was stolen from a Salzburg museum, and in the same city, a statue of Mozart was defaced by one Martin Humer, 60, who admitted tossing paint and feathers at the statue last August.
You Don't Want to Lip-Sync in Turkmenistan: The president of Turkmenistan since 1985, Saparmurat Niyazov, banned lip-syncing in his country because of its "negative effect on the development of singing and musical art." (Ashlee Simpson, beware.) The ban extends to TV, concerts and private parties. Niyazov earlier banned opera and ballet because they did not "correspond with the national mentality."
Rocker Patti Smith Covers Wagnerian Opera: Acting as a journalist, Smith went to the Wagnerian holy city of Bayreuth to review "Tannhäuser" and "Parsifal" for the German publication "Die Zeit." Among her findings: "It's very exciting and interesting," and "The Bratwurst sausages are excellent."
Let's Hire the Whole Orchestra: As a romantic gesture, this is one of the more expensive possibilities. English businessman John Barker hired London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a private Royal Festival Hall concert honoring girlfriend Heather Axelson, featuring her favorite work: the Janacek Sinfonietta. It cost 100,000 pounds (about 75,000). Her comment: "John is the most romantic man alive."
The Papal Piano Gets Stuck: The new Pope Benedict XVI, a piano fan, was temporarily frustrated when piano movers couldn't get his instrument through the windows of his papal apartment. According to the German magazine "Der Spiegel," the new pope uses the piano to relax in times of stress, and sometimes irked his previous neighbors by playing Mozart, Bach and Palestrina too loudly.
Calendar Girls at the Symphony: Eighteen women of the Canton (Ohio) Symphony (including staff, board members and supporters) have posed for an 18-month "provocative calendar" designed to change the minds of those who "think the Canton Symphony is stuffy." We wouldn't dream of thinking that, especially after viewing their Web site (www.cantonsymphony.org/morethanyouexpect.htm). The calendar is yours for a 5 donation.
Composer Eats Swan, Gets into Trouble: The well-known English composer Peter Maxwell Davies, who discovered an electrocuted whooper swan near his home in the Orkney Islands, informed the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds — and then ate the swan. He declared that the leg meat "made a delicious terrine." The Society was not amused.
Ice Orchestra Melts Away: A Stockholm concert by an orchestra of instruments made entirely from ice — including clarinets, guitars, trumpets and cellos carved by New Mexico artist Tim Linhart — was abruptly canceled when Linhart decided the student musicians weren't doing a good enough job playing his instruments. Guests in the 100-seat igloo concert hall gave Linhart the cold shoulder for insulting the musicians.
The Prowler Played Beethoven: New Riegel, Ohio's police chief, one Steve Swartzmiller, was awakened in the middle of the night last February by a man playing Beethoven on his piano. It was 19-year-old Shawn Chadwell, who was drunk and wandered into the wrong house by accident. Swartzmiller charged him with underage drinking and burglary, but added that he "played perfect Beethoven."
2007
By Melinda Bargreen
You’ve always heard that truth is stranger than fiction. Believe it! Over the 12 months of 2007, we’ve gathered plenty of evidence to prove that whenever its musicians aren’t producing sublime music, the classical world can behave just as badly, and as oddly, as anyone else. Here are just a few stories to prove it.
The Oboist is a Bookie: A federal judge sentenced Washington, D.C., classical oboist H. David Meyers last March to a year and a day in prison for money laundering and running an illegal sports-betting operation. It was up to prison authorities to decide whether the 61-year-old can play and practice in the slammer.
French horn bearing arms: New Zealand French horn player Bernard Shapiro (not the Seattle Symphony’s former principal oboist of the same name!) was charged last March with possessing a cache of “military-style” explosives. He is also a hunting guide and has been known for “solo tramps around the South Island dressed in 19th-century attire.”
Pop goes the Pops: Last May, a balcony brawl that stopped the show on opening night of the Boston Pops began with a tap on the shoulder. One of the combatants tapped a persistent talker on the shoulder a few times before turning to an usher for help. The talker stood up, punched the tapper, and pulled him to the ground by the hair.
Rudeness among the Really Terrible Orchestras: The Edinburgh-based Really Terrible Orchestra (whose membership includes author Alexander McCall Smith) was shocked to learn that a church choirmaster down south planned to steal their name to set up another band of musical misfits. The first hint of disharmony came in an email from Dave Phippen, a Cornish choirmaster: “We're going to do it no matter what you think. We presume there is no copyright to the Really Terrible Orchestra name. Should this not be the case, we don't give a !!!!” Tsk, tsk.
Really Terrible P.S.: The original Really Terrible Orchestra made its London debut in November at Cadogan Hall, normally the home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with McCall Smith serving as host and “extremely incompetent” contrabassoonist. Naturally the concert sold out.
The Bum-Wiggling Conductor: Edmonton Symphony Orchestra music director William Eddins attracted the ire of a patron who disliked his podium antics. In a letter to the Edmonton Journal, anti-wiggler Jeanie Campbell wrote, “He shakes his body, wiggles his bum, kicks his legs out, a chain hanging off his back pocket.” The unrepentant Eddins replied that “my ‘wiggling bum’ was the first thing that my lovely wife claims she ever noticed about me, so I fear it shall remain.”
Sex and Violins: Muso Magazine, self-described is “the groundbreaking magazine for the younger, more open-minded generation of classical music fans,” has released the results of a survey into the sex lives of musicians, with some startling results: Violists are “most likely to have sex on a first date,” “most likely to have had sex three or more times in the last week” and “most likely to have had 10 or more sexual partners.” Tuba players, on the other hand, not only played “the least sexy instrument” but were also “most likely to be single.”
Dangerous Times at the Dubrovnik Symphony: A member of the Dubrovnik city council broke into a concert by the city's symphony orchestra, threatened the guest conductor, and attacked the orchestra’s manager, Pero Sisa, 51, when Sisa tried to stop the man and his two accomplices.
“I have a concussion, contusion of nose and gums, and I am as blue as the sea,” Sisa told the press. “First he strangled me for a while, but since I am big, he was not successful, so he head-butted me and I passed out.”
The Vegetable Orchestra: The 11-member First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, an ensemble that gets its instruments from farmers’ markets, returned to Great Britain last month, performing on instruments — carrot flute, pepper trumpet, leek violin, pumpkin drum, celery-root bongos — which they make anew before each concert. (Organic produce is preferred.)
Mozart Makes You Fatter? Well, if you’re a pig.Vietnamese pig farmer Nguyen Chi Cong, 44, says he has boosted productivity by exposing his 3,000 hogs to the melodies of Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert while they have their snouts in the trough. He began playing recordings of classical symphonies and sonatas over loudspeakers six years ago for the benefit of his workers, only to find the music also had a soothing effect on the pigs.
“I saw that my pigs started eating more and that they were gaining weight faster than usual,” said Cong, who told a reporter that he now serenades his animals with the tunes of the great European composers daily from 7-11 a.m. and 2-4 p.m.
The Wonderful World of Opera: This was the year that brought a Genoa “Julius Caesar” production with an added role, a guy strolling around in a crocodile suit “representing the timeless spirit of Egypt,” and a production we wish we’d seen: Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger,” staged by his great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner with (as described in the German press) “Richard Wagner dancing in his underwear and a bunch of master singers horsing around the stage with oversized penises.” They have all the fun in Bayreuth.
No Panty-Throwing for Dame Kiri: The celebrated operatic soprano Dame Kiri te Kanawa prevailed in a lawsuit against her by a concert promoter when she withdrew from shows with Australian pop-star singer John Farnham. After viewing videos of Farnham performances, the diva was alarmed: “I was concerned about the knickers or underpants and underwear apparel being thrown at him and him collecting it and obviously holding it in his hands as some sort of trophy,” she told the court. “How could I, in my classical form, perform in this way?”
When in Doubt, Sue: It’s been a litigious year, with a Canadian-based conductor (Douglas Sanford) suing his musicians (in the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra) for defamation, and a British composer (Keith Burstein) suing a critic (Veronica Lee in The London Evening Standard) over an unfavorable review of his opera, “Manifest Destiny.” Also this year came news of a European Union directive on noise abatement, which might inspire lawsuits by limiting the “noise” produced by an orchestra to 85 decibels: “How could you apply it to Gustav Mahler, for instance, or Richard Strauss?” asked Libor Pesek, conductor of the Prague Symphony.
Truth Really is Stranger than Fiction: The Kazakhstan Orchestra has invited “Borat” movie star Sacha Baron Cohen’s composer brother, Erran Cohen, to compose a symphony. Despite the wildly unfavorable picture of Kazakhstan in the movie, and the resulting dismay among Kazakhs, it seems they really liked the movie’s film score – which Erran Cohen composed. Watch for the new work, called “Zere” (in honor of sponsorship from Kazakhstan’s Zere Corporation).
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