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James Levine: His Top 10 Operas at the Met
In a widely expected move, the Metropolitan Opera has announced that music director James Levine will step down at the end of this season, after more than 40 years on the podium. The Met plans to name a successor in the coming months and, starting next season, Levine will become the company’s music director emeritus.
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New Jersey Arts Groups Grapple With Changing Audiences
Working in the shadow of a major city is a challenge faced by suburban arts organizations across the United States, but especially in New Jersey, where New York City and Philadelphia act as strong magnets for culture lovers. The state’s opera companies have particularly struggled to stay afloat, not only in recent times, but for well over a decade.
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Goodbye ‘American Idol’… Hello ‘Virtuosos?’
Just as “American Idol” prepares to ride off into the sunset with a three-part series farewell on Fox this week comes this news: a Hungarian TV talent show devoted to young classical musicians has been optioned by a major American production company.
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Five Takeaways from Classical April Fool’s Day
April Fool’s Day offers classical music organizations an opportunity to reveal a less serious side, which increasingly means online video. There were at least three such videos that made the rounds in 2016. At the risk of turning a holiday of silliness and shenanigans into an exercise in furrowed-brow analysis, here are five takeaways from April Fool’s Day.
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Baltimore Symphony Premiere Aims to Address Racial Strife
Tucked inside a press release about the Baltimore Symphony’s April 16 concert at Carnegie Hall was one eye-catching detail: Before the program’s centerpiece of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Marin Alsop is slated to conduct the premiere of Kevin Puts‘s The City, a long-scheduled piece whose creation took on “added focus,” after last year’s rioting and protests after the death of Freddie Gray. It will be accompanied by a film by…
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How New York’s Concert Halls Score on TripAdvisor
“Shabby and uncomfortable just about sums it up” is how one prolific TripAdvisor reviewer describes Carnegie Hall. “Bad sound for classical music” is what another says of Boston’s Symphony Hall.
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The Rising Power of the Opera Conductor
Mark Wigglesworth, the music director of the English National Opera for the past six months, resigned Tuesday, provoking dismay and hand-wringing over the future of the beleaguered company.
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Is It Wrong to Call Classical Music ‘Soothing?’
Hilary Clinton was asked last week in an interview on SiriusXM what music she would play if she had her own radio channel. She cited Adele, classic rock, and, for days when she’s buried in paperwork, “soothing” classical music. If an election was based solely on musical tastes, Clinton would get much of the public’s vote: Classical music in…
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Keith Emerson Introduced Rock Fans to Classical Music
A week that began with the death of legendary Beatles producer George Martin ended with the passing of Keith Emerson, the gifted keyboardist of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Much has been written about how Martin’s classical background shaped the Beatles’ sound, from his adding a string quartet arrangement to “Yesterday” to creating the famous orchestral glissando in…
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Opera Companies Lead the Arts in Marketing Expenses
Opera companies and symphony orchestras spend more than any other cultural sector on marketing in order to entice the public to attend a performance, according to a new report from the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University. But the data suggests that there is a payoff to the dollars spent on advertising, social media…