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Dispatch from Belfast: The Ulster Orchestra’s Potent Season Finale
BELFAST – The Ulster Orchestra has long been regarded as one of the jewels in Northern Ireland’s cultural crown but in recent years, serious doubts emerged about its existence as local government funding was slashed and talk of bankruptcy suddenly emerged.
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Peter Gelb: Met Opera Is Exploring New Box Office Strategies
Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb said on Saturday that the company is launching new strategies to combat its lagging ticket sales, including convening a series of focus groups, hiring box office consultants and expanding its on-demand video streaming services.
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If Sea World Draws Criticism, Should the Opera Too?
A provocative article on the website Counterpunch looks at whether there is a double standard when it comes to the use of live animals in works of art. At a time when Sea World and Ringling Bros. have bowed to public pressure and changed their policies on captive orca whales and elephants, respectively, New York artists and their audiences seem particularly enthralled this season…
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The Phenomenon of the Rebel Cellist
Last week, the cellist Sergei Roldugin appeared in the Syrian city of Palmyra, performing a solo while flanked by members of Russia’s Mariinsky Theater Orchestra. The official performance has been described as a victory lap for Russia, whose special forces recently helped recapture the city from ISIS. It also represented a defiant gesture for Roldugin, a former principal cellist at the Mariinsky…
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When the Metropolitan Opera Presented Sunday Concerts
The Metropolitan Opera’s grim box office numbers have received a good deal of attention from New York’s opera lovers, including the classical music writers of the New York Times, who last week channeled their inner impresarios to offer some suggestions for the company.
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‘West Side Story’ and the Question of Artists’ Legacies
The rights holders for West Side Story have withdrawn permission for the musical to be performed in Mississippi and North Carolina, apparently because of the new anti-LGBT laws passed in both states. The move, which was reported by Playbill, follows cancelled concerts in those states by pop artists including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Star and Bryan Adams.
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Is Ravel’s ‘Boléro’ Really a Warhorse?
The European copyright has expired for classical music’s largest and most extravagant crescendo, Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. Although the U.S. copyright does not run out until 2025, Europeans can now use the piece freely in advertisements, films and figure-skating routines without having to pay royalties.
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‘The Shining’ Opera Is Based on King Novel – Not Kubrick Film
Any list of “horror operas” would not be a long one. It might include supernatural thrillers like Meyerbeer’s Robert Le Diable, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Philip Glass’s Fall of the House of Usher. Some would add Verdi’s Macbeth (plenty of witches) and Strauss’s Elektra (an all-around grim tale).
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Marian Anderson to Appear on the $5 Bill
The United States will soon join Sweden, Norway and Australia in featuring a famed opera singer on its currency. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Wednesday that the back of the $5 bill is going to be overhauled to include images of the late contralto Marian Anderson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Martin Luther King…
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Henry Threadgill’s Pulitzer Prize Win Is a Gesture to Jazz’s Avant-Garde
The 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music went not to a classical composition but a jazz work: Henry Threadgill’s In for a Penny, In for a Pound, a four-movement, self-described “epic” written to showcase the members of his quintet Zooid.