It's come to light that the star tenor Rolando Villazón did the decent thing and refunded his fee after singing for only seven minutes at a concert in the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen 10 days ago.
opera buzz
David Nice
Three years ago, the adventurous young company Second Movement got into its stride at Covent Garden Studios with a triple bill of unusual operatic bedfellows. An Offenbach update raised a laugh or two, Shostakovich's completion of ill-fated pupil Fleischmann's Chekhov mini-opera Rothschild's Violin was touted as the highlight, but most of the audience were bowled over instead by a 1920s slice of opera-cum-jazz-cum-surrealism, Martinů's The Knife's Tears (pictured below).
Struck by its success, conductor Nicholas Chalmers and director Oliver Mears decided to investigate a lengthier slice of Martinu's wacky Paris years, The Three Wishes or The Inconstancy of Life.
Adam Sweeting
Since his death at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, the legend of charismatic Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna has grown to almost mythic proportions. Last year the three-time world champion was voted Best Driver in F1 History in a drivers’ poll in Autosport magazine, and a new documentary about his career is due in cinemas this autumn from Working Title Films.
David Nice
A new "Inspire Project" over in Kensington hopes to catch more new audiences for opera by inviting 700 people to watch the new production of a real operatic rarity, Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini, and pay what they like, if they like, at the end of the performance.
David Nice
Somehow I hadn't expected the death three days ago of the great British tenor, though unquestionably a world-class artist, to be commemorated among the international set of the Verbier Festival. Yet last night, before he raised his baton to conduct the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, conductor Marc Minkowski had a few words to say about Anthony Rolfe Johnson. His mezzo-soprano, the glorious Anne Sofie von Otter, especially wanted to dedicate her performance to a dearly loved friend and colleague.
Jasper Rees
Last weekend we posted a round-up of the vast array of site-specific work happening in the theatre over the summer. Most of them are shows which are so boldly experimental that they haven't much realistic hope of a commercial future. Plays for an audience of one are not the producer's friend. But it turns out that it's not just the mighty Punchdrunk who can shift tickets by the skipload.
Jasper Rees
The BBC's cultural conscience has been pricked, it would seem, by the World Cup now reaching its endgame in South Africa. Either that or departments don't talk to one another. Singing for Life, Sunday night's documentary on BBC Four about the young singers who aspire to trade the township choir for the opera stage, also focused on Fikile Mvinjelwa, a Cape Town baritone who made it to the Met. Now Newsnight is reporting on another singer who has been on a comparable journey to stardom.
David Nice
When Billy Budd, too-innocent hero of Britten's opera by way of Melville's trouble-at-sea novella, bids farewell to the Rights o'Man, his superior officers prick up their ears at the implications of mutiny. It's a ship he hymns, but the connection is first and foremost with Thomas Paine's revolutionary tract.
igor.toronyilalic
It's amazing to think that Marcel Proust first heard Wagner's four-and-a-half-hour opera Die Meistersinger down his telephone. That same day, in 1911, he also ingested three hours of Debussy's Pélleas et Mélisande. We learn all this from Edward Seckerson's brilliant new Radio Three documentary about the remarkable world of the Théâtrophone, a device that used telephone transmitters to relay operas - and later news and sermons - live from wherever (the Opéra Comique to begin with) to hotels and houses around Paris. By 1893, this prototype radio had 1,300 subscribers; takers included the King of Portugal and Victor Hugo. The pleasure telephone industry spread first to Hungary, where one of Edison's assistants, Tivadar Puskás, had set up one of the world's most advanced telephone networks, then to Britain and the Americas.
David Nice
It used to be a treat saved up for the end of the season, when a Christie of Glyndebourne would step before the curtain and announce the next year's operas. Now, like everyone else, Glyndebourne is jumping in quick with its plans, partly, I guess, to raise money for its most expensive project yet - Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg as next year's very festive opening gambit.