Eleven Singing Days to Christmas!

You need more vocal music?

Of course you do. This week I came across Opera Music Broadcast. com and I have to say that so far I am quite impressed. Vocal music all day, every day. Lots of opera, of course, but also other vocal stuff too. I am listening to it as a nice change from our local allclassical.org. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Now we know where the money isn't

You may remember that a few weeks ago I wrote about the props manager at Carnegie Hall and how he made over half a million bucks last year. Well, the National Endowment for the Arts has just published its findings on the annual income of professional musicians and found that the median income last year for all professional musicians was $22,600 You can't raise a family and pay the bills on that. My advice to young aspiring musicians: go into the props management business!

Hope for one-handed pianists?

There are a number of compositions in the classical piano repertoire that were written for one-handed pianists. Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist from the early part of the 20th century was shot in the elbow in World War I, had his right arm amputated and after the war commissioned the writing of works for the left hand from such notable composers as Britten, Hindemith, Korngold, Richard Strauss and Prokofiev. When I saw this article a few days ago it made me wonder whether the time might not be rapidly approaching when advances in engineering and computer technology might not render such compositions unnecessary in the future. I realise that at the present time such prosthetic devices still fall short of the degree of sophistication needed for someone to play the piano - but surely that is just a question of degree, isn't it?

Contes d'Hoffmann

Last week I wrote about the new production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann and how our delicate sensibilities were to be shielded from the sight of bare breasts. The Met has now decided that the women concerned will wear sheer body stockings. Zachary Woolf, who writes about opera for the New York Observer, talked about this on New York City's WQXR. Apparently, Peter Gelb is claiming that this cover-up is necessary in order that the Met comply with the standards set by Motion Picture of America. Listen to Zachary Woolf here. Since when did bare breasts constitute "R-rated content"? It would seem that Europeans take a more worldly view of this sort of thing (well, duh!) and La Scala in Milan had no problem in showing a high def screening of Carmen, which opened their season last week, and made the Met's Contes d'Hoffmann seem positively milquetoast! See Operachic's review here.

Chanticleer

One of the things I miss about no longer living in northern California (actually there isn't that much - and it seems to fade month by month) is that I no longer get to hear Chanticleer in Petaluma at Christmas. What a wondrous sound they make! Here they are singing O Magnum Mysterium. I kinda wish it were the Morten Lauridsen setting but there we are.

Choral singing really doesn't get any better than that, does it? That's them at the top of the page of course.

I really want to be "too big to fail"!

Last week the Los Angeles Opera received a bridging loan of $14 million from LA County. Its financial woes seem to stem from their recent Ring Cycle production which bloated the company's budget by $32 million. This article in the LA Times included the following:

You could criticize the company for its ambition and not making something cheaper (the budget is $32 million), but had that been the case it may not have had something special enough to be worth bailing out.

Perhaps I am missing something here but this sounds like a totally specious argument. Surely, had the company mounted productions it could afford it wouldn't have needed to be bailed out.

Housekeeping

There is a matter I have been meaning to mention for a while now, and it relates to your wishing to comment on any of my blog posts. You will find that there is a delay between the time you enter your comment and the time when it actually appears as a comment on the blog. This occurs because I am not automatically informed by the web site that a comment has been entered, so it is not until I find out by other means that I am able to see that your comments are posted. Please don't think that this means I don't care about your comments; I do, and I am trying to find a way in which I can deal with them in a more timely and efficient manner.

Christmas Concerts

I seem to have a pretty full musical calendar over the next couple of weeks but there is no event I am looking forward to more than the Christmas Concert to be given by the Portland Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. You may recall that I raved about their season-opening concert a few weeks ago. Their Christmas concert takes place on December 26th at the Schnitz and will include an appearance by one of my very favourite opera singers, Richard Zeller. This will be the perfect antidote to Christmas Day over-indulgence, and a wonderful event to attend with your kids, grand-children, parents or other loved ones. Look for me there and come to say hello! You may book your tickets and find other information here.

Have a happy and productive week and, for those who are celebrating it this week - Happy Hannukah!

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Eleven Singing Days to Christmas!