First reactions for Cecilia Bartoli as Norma

 opera  3 Responses »
May 182013
 

norma salzburger pfingstfestspiele 102 v image853 7ce44e292721619ab1c1077f6f262a89f55266d7 500x281 First reactions for Cecilia Bartoli as Norma

Who loves , will prob­ably love her Norma. Her eyes sparkle, she rolls her ‘R’s, breathes the piani, and tackles the eas­ily. Her stage début in Norma wants to get rid of the exist­ing per­form­ance tra­di­tion; to free inter­pret­ers from the shadow of . Bartoli’s Norma is a cel­eb­ra­tion of her own per­sonal style: some­what mannered, but per­fect, and always unmistakable.

says Bay­erischer Rund­funk.

How­ever Deutsch­landra­dio wanted to boo; not the per­formers or the pro­duc­tion team, but the audi­ence who annoyed with fall­ing hand­bags, cell-phones and inap­pro­pri­ate hys­ter­ical cries of “bravo!”. How­ever, they too cry “bravo” in their review,

Cecilia Bar­toli is, at the begin­ning of Bellini’s Norma in Salzburg, below her poten­tial, but then her musi­cian­ship shows through… After the inter­val Bar­toli was totally con­vin­cing, and her col­oratura fire­works fit per­fectly, but para­mount was her inter­pret­a­tion of the role, which offered some­thing spe­cial, very dif­fer­ent from Cal­las (and her count­less suc­cessors): a spir­itu­al­ity in the bel canto with innu­mer­able shades and col­ours.… [con­tinue reading]

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The first photos of Bartoli’s Norma at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival

 opera  1 Response »
May 152013
 

Whitsun Festival 2013 500x424 The first photos of Bartolis Norma at the Salzburg Whitsun FestivalFirst glimpses of ’s Norma at Salzburg. They explain the cover of the Fest­ival brochure.

Bartoli’s intro­duc­tion to the Whit­sun Fest­ival bro­chure reads,

But also, Norma is often mis­judged from the point-of-view of its plot. A care­ful sta­ging will show, how­ever, that the grip­ping events unfold in a strin­gent and lin­ear way, reflect­ing how the heroine devel­ops emo­tion­ally until the con­scious final step towards her self-sacrifice at the stake.

And indeed this tra­gic con­flict between her duties and that towards which her heart is drawn is a struggle to which many women are exposed sooner or later. Too often, women give up what is most valu­able to them, but too often they them­selves are made into vic­tims. Norma tries to escape from such restraints by sac­ri­fi­cing that which is most dear to her: first her chil­dren, then her love and finally her life.… [con­tinue reading]

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Pavel Dmitrichenko’s lawyers to contest the forensic results of acid attack

 ballet  No Responses »
May 152013
 

85a0fe479a19 435x500 Pavel Dmitrichenkos lawyers to contest the forensic results of acid attack ’s law­yers will con­test the forensic res­ults that show that the acid attack on chief caused griev­ous bod­ily harm. Dmitrichenko, who is in jail, is accused of instig­at­ing the assault on Filin in January.

Law­yer Viol­etta Volkova said that the ser­i­ous­ness of the effects of the attack would be an import­ant factor in sen­ten­cing if the court comes down against her cli­ent  There is a max­imum sen­tence of twelve years for griev­ous bod­ily harm, says Isvestia. How­ever, she is also attempt­ing to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Filin is still in Ger­many under­go­ing treat­ment to his eyes, and is said to be recov­er­ing his sight.… [con­tinue reading]

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Mitsuko Uchida gives three London concerts in celebration of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust

 music  No Responses »
May 142013
 

Mitsuko Uchida 397x500 Mitsuko Uchida gives three London concerts in celebration of the Borletti Buitoni TrustFrom Fri­day the will be inund­ated with musi­cians, an array of tal­ent to mark the 10th anniversary of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT).

Ant­oine Tamestit neatly sums up what the BBT is about:

In the life of a young artist, the free­dom and space for artistic inspir­a­tion and devel­op­ment are essen­tial. The Borletti-Buitoni Trust is full of incred­ible per­son­al­it­ies whose main goal is pre­cisely to give this. They offer not only the fin­an­cial sup­port to help build one’s dreams, but also the advice, encour­age­ment and prac­tical means to real­ise them.

A truly remark­able array of inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed musi­cians com­ing together for three days of spir­ited music-making: pian­ists Jonathan Biss and Llŷr Wil­li­ams, viol­in­ists Ver­onika Eberle and Alina Ibra­gimova, viol­ist Ant­oine Tamestit, cel­lists Nic­olas Alt­staedt and Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk, trom­bon­ist Jör­gen van Rijen, cla­ri­net­tist Mar­tin Fröst, per­cus­sion­ist Colin Cur­rie, mezzo Chris­ti­anne Stotijn, bari­tone Henk Neven, the Elias String Quar­tet and Quatuor Ebèné  will all gather in Lon­don for three con­certs led by found­ing trustee , plus many free day­time and late even­ing events.… [con­tinue reading]

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Culture crash: MaggioDanza ballet company axed in Florence

 ballet, music, opera  No Responses »
May 142013
 

Francesco Ventriglia 332x500 Culture crash: MaggioDanza ballet company axed in FlorenceAddio to Mag­gi­oDanza, the bal­let com­pany formed in 1967 under the aus­pices of the ’s Mag­gio Musicale Fiorentino.

A fin­an­cial crisis has res­ul­ted in the decision to axe the bal­let com­pany,  and cut the num­ber of tech­nical and admin­is­trat­ive staff, tak­ing the num­ber of wage pack­ets from 346 to 273. Chorus and orches­tra are saved how­ever, with the chorus los­ing two mem­bers who are retir­ing, and the orches­tra gain­ing three mem­bers tak­ing its num­ber to 96. The cre­at­ive work­shops will be closed and future pro­duc­tions will be made off site or hired in. The run­ning costs of 18 mil­lion euros each year to pay the staff can­not be sustained.

The bal­let com­pany had already been stream­lined to 16 ele­ments over the last few years, and after Vladi­mir Derevi­anko left the dir­ec­tion of the com­pany in 2010 it has been on shaky ground.… [con­tinue reading]

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Britten and Pears’ admiration for Ravi Shankar: Unbelievable skill and invention

 music  No Responses »
May 132013
 

britten Britten and Pears admiration for Ravi Shankar: Unbelievable skill and invention

A 1950s note writ­ten on a let­ter­head when com­poser  and his part­ner, the singer Peter Pears, were say­ing in Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel has come to light, which shows their admir­a­tion for India’s Pan­dit Ravi Shankar, whom they called “the real thing”.

The let­ter and diary extracts will be shown in the museum in the Red House in Suf­folk, where Brit­ten and Pears lived from 1957 . Today The Red House is the home of the Britten—Pears Found­a­tion. From 8 June — at the start of the 2013 Alde­burgh Fest­ival — the site re-opens to wel­come vis­it­ors in Britten’s cen­ten­ary year, after a  £4.7 mil­lion redevelopment.

Ravi Shankar, a won­der­ful vir­tu­oso, played his own Indian music to us at the radio sta­tion.… [con­tinue reading]

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Carla Fracci, Luciana Savignano and Svetlana Zakharova go to the ball

 ballet  1 Response »
May 122013
 

Black White Ball Milan 8 700x200 Carla Fracci, Luciana Savignano and Svetlana Zakharova go to the ball

To cel­eb­rate 200th Anniversary of the form­a­tion of the Bal­let School at Milan’s , the Academy, which runs the school, threw a Black and White Ball with three excep­tional guests: dan­cers , Luciana Sav­ig­n­ano and .

The event was held in the ex-ice rink, the Palazzo del Ghi­ac­cio, a 1920s Liberty struc­ture. Almost 500 people (pay­ing €200 for their ticket) atten­ded the even­ing, which was to not only cel­eb­rate the anniversary, but to raise money for a new build­ing which will allow stu­dents who live far from Milan to stay in the city dur­ing the week.

The school’s bal­let stu­dents presen­ted extracts from Paquita and Béjart’s Gaîté par­is­i­enne, a 60-piece orches­tra mixed jazz stand­ards with bal­let scores, and fifty tables with names such a ‘Gis­elle’ (where Carla Fracci was seated, obvi­ously) and ‘Jeune Homme’, let all the guests eat and sip their spumante in com­fort.… [con­tinue reading]

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