How to Lose All Credibility

Of all the tech stories in the news this week, the one I find most interesting is how Scott Thompson lost his job as CEO of Yahoo!.

1. He lied on his resume.
2. When a journalist mentioned his degree in accounting & computer science, he didn't correct her.
3. When the lie was discovered, he blamed the executive recruiting firm that he worked with in 2000. That firm promptly issued a denial and provided information to Yahoo! about his 2000 resume.
4. He never admitted that, well, he lied.
5. He told his board that he had "minor surgery," but not that it was minor surgery for thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer is pretty curable, but WTF?

Child Sexual Abuse in Ulta-Orthodox Jewish Communities

The NY Times has had a series of astonishing articles about what happens to individuals in some NYC ultra-Orthodox communities who report child sexual abuse to the secular authorities:

• Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse
• For Ultra-Orthodox in Abuse Cases, Prosecutor Has Different Rules
• Brooklyn Prosecutor Defends Record on Sex Abuse Cases
• Brooklyn Prosecutor to Target Intimidation in Abuse Cases 

They are...somewhat terrifying. The ultra-Orthodox come across as a cult. In tomorrow's paper, there's a letter from Rabbi David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of American, and here's the appalling money graf:

Contrary to the implications of your recent articles and editorial about child abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community, the role of the rabbi in cases of suspected abuse is not to dissuade the individual from reporting to the secular authorities, but simply to ascertain that the suspicion meets a certain threshold of credibility.

Rabbi Zwiebel seems to have missed the point that in a secular society, the DA and police investigate and determine whether a suspicion meets an appropriate threshold of credibility. It is not the job of the rabbinate or the priesthood to do this.

Amazing Examples of PR Stupidity

As I've noted before, Bay Area musical organizations have been remarkably generous and thoughtful about extending press tickets to members of the musical blogosphere. I'm grateful for that; I know my fellow bloggers are grateful; I want to express my thanks to all the organizations and publicists who've invited me to their concerts and performances. You're the best.

Unfortunately, not all PR folks and organizations are quite as professional and enlightened in dealing with bloggers and others who write primarily for web publications. I learned yesterday that the publicists for a number of Bay Area theater companies managed to shoot themselves in the foot rather nicely this week. They sent email around to various critics - I do not know how many - telling them that to obtain comp tickets in the future, the critics would have to provide web analytics demonstrating their readership.

Among the critics who received this missive was Janos Gereben, former arts editor of the Oakland Post (for two decades), former music editor of the Mercury News, the Seattle Times, and regular contributor to numerous local publications for many years now, including the SF Examiner and SF Classical Voice.

Of all people to make threats to....it's obvious that the organizations represented by the email hadn't stopped to consider a few points.

• WTF, you're asking Janos to provide web stats? You don't know and trust his work after 40 years on the local scene?
• Believe it or not, not everyone published on the web has access to blogstats. If you have your own blog, yes, you have access, depending on the platform and depending on whether you have enabled an analytics program on your blog. However, if you think that I can get the analytics for SFCV or my own reviews on SFCV, please enjoy watching me fall on the floor laughing.
• All publicity is not actually good publicity, and I'm happy to provide a little bad publicity for the publicists whose names appeared on the email: Charles Zukow and Kevin Kopjak, Terence Keane, Erin Garcia, \ Marilyn Langbehn, Sasha Hnatkovich, Erica Lewis-Finein, Carla Befera, on behalf of various theatrical organizations, all of whose names the readers of this blog would undoubtedly know.
• Not all of your shows are sellouts. You can, in fact, afford to give away tickets to 10 or 20 reviewers. Theatrical runs are not one-shot or, usually, even eight-shot gigs. If you don't want to put everybody on opening night, spread 'em out over the first two or three shows.
• You'd rather lose reviews than give tickets to the wrong people. BZZZZT. That is shooting yourself in the foot.

Here's the most galling paragraph from the email that was sent around:

 Please don’t fret about this! The report you send will not automatically qualify or disqualify you for attendance at any theater. Each of our companies retains the right to set its own policies with regard to press passes, and this report is only one of many factors we consider when dealing with reviewers. The traffic data it provides will simply allow us to make a fair and informed comparison of the many opportunities offered to us for online coverage – and to clearly explain those opportunities to leaders at our theaters who are understandably concerned about the number of complimentary tickets we distribute.

Translation: we are making this demand en masse, but really, this email is meaningless, because each individual organization will be making its own decisions. Honestly, guys: don't you read the people you emailed this to? Don't you know their work and whether they're good reviewers? That might actually be more important than raw statistics.

Overall, you'll get more bad than good out of this, including a refusal from Janos - and possibly others - to cover the organizations as long as these demands are maintained. 

In closing, if anyone's curious about my blogstats, you should know that they're pretty wimpy compared to, say, La Cieca's up-to-18,000 per day page views. Interpreting analytics reports is always tricky, so I'll just leave it at this: I have about 2200 unique visitors per month and something between 5500 and 7000 page views per month.

More DFD

Odd ends:

• Alex Ross excerpts letters from Britten to DFD about the War Requiem, the work itself, and DFD's own words about the premier. His "beloved wife" was Irmgard Poppen, who died tragically following the birth  of their third son. (I am amused at "Peter Pears has agreed to sing the tenor part." I would expect nothing else.)
• Leo Carey at The New Yorker discusses DFD's art, with illuminating examples.
• Anthony Tommasini has a fine appreciation in the Times.
• A guide in clips from the Guardian.
• A tweet from SF Opera quotes Elisabeth Schwarzkopf saying DFD was a "god who had it all." Neither SFO nor the Met managed to hire him to sing in their houses.
• Meanwhile, at NPR, here's George Jellinek playing some of DFD's recordings and discussing the singer and his career.

DFD

From Germany comes the news that Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has died at 86. The baritone was a seminal singer, one of the towering figures of the postwar vocal scene. If you knew his singing, you had opinions about it, love or hate or something in between, but whether he was to your taste or not, his greatness and influence cannot be denied.

My favorite of his recordings is an oddball: Peter, the father, in Hansel und Gretel. No excerpts on YouTube, so here's Schubert's "An die Musik."




Update: The NY Times obit is up; it's not terribly probing.

Cal Bach Summer Chorus Workshop

Cal Bach's annual summer workshop is coming up. Once again, it'll be Bach cantata choruses. The price is $50, which includes music and lunch. You can register on line or by mail. Here are the details:

Paul Flight continues his survey of the choruses from the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. Join members of the California Bach Society and Artistic Director Paul Flight in exploring the opening choruses from Cantata 110, Unser Mund sei voll Lachens; Cantata 39, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot; and Cantata 125, Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin. Other choruses will include Ich harre des Herrn fromCantata 131, and Meine Augen stehen and Meine tage in den Leiden fromCantata 150. Dr. Flight will have the assistance of the CBS rehearsal accompanist, Gwen Adams.

Saturday, August 25, 2012, 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., in Palo Alto

Or Purchase Tickets by Mail:

Download and print out the Registration Form. Mail form and $50 check to

California Bach Society

PO Box 1526

Palo Alto, CA 94302-1526

Opera Manhattan 2012

Opera Manhattan has a great triple bill opening tonight:

• La Voix Humaine
• The Medium
• Suor Angelica

You can attend for $25 per opera or $65 for all three. Opera Manhattan performs at the following theater, which they note has staircases and is not accessible:

Theater at St. Clements
423 W. 46th, NY, NY

I'm not sure what time the performances start, because that critical information is not in their email and their web server seems to be down. Bzzzt! You can try their home page later, or phone them at...oops, also not in the email! or try their Facebook page.

Okay, the Facebook page says 6:30 p.m. Useful to know! Also, performances are on May 17-21, 2012.

The Mother of All Cast Change Advisories

From the Met, about next season, with annotations in square brackets:

Gwyn Hughes-Jones will make his Met role debut as Manrico in Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the September 29 matinee and will also sing the role on October 4, 8, 12, 17, 20, and 25. [He is replacing TBA and shares the role with Marco Berti. We had Berti here as Manrico a couple of years back and I thought him poor, but he was an excellent Calaf this past season, so who knows?] [P. S. The tenor's management company does not have a hyphen in his name.]

Carmen Giannattasio will replace Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora in Il Trovatore on October 12, 17, 20, and 25. These performances are in addition to the previously announced dates when Giannattasio will sing the role.

Sondra Radvanovsky will replace Karita Mattila as Amelia in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera on November 8, 12, 15, 19, 24, 27, 30, December 4 and 8 matinee. The role of Amelia for the performance of December 14 is TBA. The November 8 premiere of David Alden’s new production will be Radvanovsky’s Met role debut as Amelia. [Love Mattila but not in Italian opera. This is a win.] [Lee Abrahamian of the Met is quoted in the Times telling Dan Wakin that "Karita was engaged for Ballo five years ago, and she recently decided the role was not right for her."]

Marcelo Álvarez will sing Gustavo III in Un Ballo in Maschera on November 27, replacing Roberto De Biasio. Álvarez will now sing all performances of the role in the 2012-13 season.

Dolora Zajick will replace Olga Borodina as Amneris in Verdi’s Aida on December 19, 22, and 28. As previously announced, Borodina will sing the role on November 23, 26, 29 and December 3, 7, 12, and 15 matinee.

Erwin Schrott will make his Met role debut as Doctor Dulcamara in Bartlett Sher’s new production of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore on January 30. He will also sing the role on February 2, 6, and 9 matinee.

TBA will replace Sondra Radvanovsky as Elisabeth de Valois in all performances of Verdi’s Don Carlo in the 2012-13 season. [Hmmm! Racette?]

Italian baritone Marco Vratogna will make his Met debut as Iago in Verdi’s Otello on March 27. He replaces Thomas Hampson, who will still sing the performances on March 11, 15, 20, 23, and 30.

Correction Appended

You'll want to see the update added to the cast change advisory posting; I was wrong!

Disappearing Cast Change Advisories

Update: I was wrong! The Met is still sending the advisories, but evidently some out-of-town journalists didn't feel a need to be updated on every change. (What is wrong with them??) The cast change advisories have been going to a smaller, more local, distribution list. I've asked them to add me back on.

*****

I noticed during the recent Ring cycles that I hadn't gotten any email from the Metropolitan Opera about cast change advisories. If you followed along, you know that there were plenty of them: Stefan Margita and Jonas Kaufmann made it to only one each of their three scheduled performances, Eric Owens missed one Goetterdaemmerung, and Deborah Voigt missed a Siegfried.

I'd call that news, but the Met, "based on journalist feedback," has decided to send only HD broadcast cast change advisories. They'll update the web site for cast changes - meaning you have to look at every damn performance, and know what the original cast was, to determine what changed, if anything.

I think this is bad. Send the email, or have a single location on the web site for these announcements, and add an RSS feed. Don't bury the information.

I have no idea which journalists have given them feedback, except that they didn't ask me, and if I'd been offering spontaneous feedback, I'd've said "bring on the email!" Are cast change advisories really a problem for other journalists? Do opera and music journalists not know how to filter their email if several Met cast change advisories each month are overwhelming their inboxes?

Or is it just too embarrassing to have music bloggers calling attention to the changes? It's not as though we'll have James Levine withdrawing constantly in the next year or anything.

Ensemble SPAM

No, really! That's their name:

Shira Kammen
Peter Maund
Allison Zelles Lloyd
Marsha Genensky

They'll be playing at St. Bede's Episcopal Church in Menlo Park on Saturday, May 26, 2012, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets.

Symphonic Benefit for the Women's Cancer Resource Center

The Community Women's Orchestra will perform a program to benefit the Women's Cancer Resource Center next Sunday. Two fine organizations, and what is this Conductor-for-a-Day business? I should apply (or bid on it, if it's that kind of thing).

Remember, this is probably the only chance you will get this year to hear a work by Peggy Glanville-Hicks, the excellent Australian composer, in the Bay Area:

Community Women’s Orchestra

Dr. Kathleen McGuire, conductor | Jessica Bejarano, assistant conductor

SPRING CONCERT: BREAST CANCER BENEFIT
Sunday, May 20, 2012 – 5 PM

Lake Merritt United Methodist Church

1330 Lakeshore Avenue, Oakland

All tickets - by donation - will benefit the Women's Cancer Resource Center of Oakland, California

Tickets at the door or in advance: http://www.communitywomensorchestra.org

 Program:

• Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912 – 1990): Sinfonia da Pacifica (1953) – 2012 edition (premiere)
• Max Bruch (1838 – 1920): Romanze Op. 85 for Viola and Orchestra (1912) featuring CWO alumna Whitney Smith, viola solo
• Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883): Rienzi Overture (1842)
• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827): Symphony No. 7, 2nd movement (1812) featuring "Conductor-for-a-Day" Bill Rudiak 

Grisey in Vermont

I've been getting press releases from Yellow Barn, a "center for chamber music performance and study" in Putney, Vermont. The latest describes a program consisting only of Gérard Grisey's Le noir de l'etoile, for six percussionists placed around the audience. I'd go if I could; if you're in the northeast, maybe you can:

Friday, May 25

The Greenwood School soccer field | 8:16 (at sunset)
Putney, VT

Pre-concert discussion at 7pm in the gymnasium

Post-concert reception with the artists
Free Admission

More InformationVisit our blog for a list of related listening and reading materials

Gérard Grisey (1946-1998) Le Noir de l'Etoile (1989-90)
for six percussionists placed around an audience

James Beauton

Greg Beyer

Amy Garapic

Doug Perkins

Jeff Stern

Mari Yoshinaga

with astronomer Tom Geballe

Audience please note:

Please arrive before 8pm for parking.

The audience will be sitting on the lawn. Bring your own blanket or folding chairs.
Chairs will be available for those who need assistance. Please call Yellow Barn at (802) 387-6637 x106 to reserve.
The piece will finish after sunset. The campus lights will be on, but flashlights are recommended.

The rain location is the Greenwood School gymnasium.

Hairpins

If it's rare to hear works by women at San Francisco Symphony - excepting the odd Gubaidulina a few years back and a Higdon since - it's about equally rare to see and hear a woman conducting SFS. This year, we've had rising stars Jane Glover, whom I did not see, and Susanna Mälkki, whom I did.

I hope she is back soon, though she does not appear to be on next season schedule. This year's program got only two nights, rather than the usual three (or sometimes four). She has a conducting style as angular and sharp as a razor; I could hardly keep my eyes off her and I bet the musicians could not either. The whole concert crackled with energy and focus.

She opened with Modulations, from the French spectralist composer Gérard Grisey's 90-minute cycle Les espace acoustiques. As I said to Joshua Kosman later, I'm sure I was the only person in the room who'd heard Les espace acoustique more often (on record) than the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto that followed - since I'd never heard any of the Prokofiev piano concertos before. (Yes, I do have some odd gaps in my musical knowledge.)  Modulations is about 15 minutes long, an essay in shifting orchestral textures mostly expressed in extremely short phrases that grow in volume and then fade away: hairpins, as it were. It's not so easy to hear the structure, but it certainly sounds coherent, and often extremely beautiful. I wish they'd played the whole thing...maybe another time, perhaps when MTT starts programming recent mavericks rather than the ones who've been dead for decades. Or maybe he'll just bring back Mälkki, conductor of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, who has more of an affinity for this kind of music than he does.

Next up, Horacio Gutiérrez in a fluent and entirely charming performance of the Prokofiev Third PC. Okay, that was fun - and audience ate it up. Whose recordings of the Prokofiev piano concertos should I buy?

Last, the Sibelius First, which got a taut and high-tension performance, to the point where I wondered how far she could possibly go with it before the orchestra exploded or fell apart. She kept finding new places to go and, remarkably, never ran into problems with the discursive form of the piece, nor did the orchestra ever come to grief. Strength to strength! I hope she'll be back soon.

Definite Impossibilities

There I was, rehearsing to sing the Siegfried Brünnhilde.

The stage and set were mostly white, with different levels; I saw many areas of green, or greenery, which may have been windows behind which there were photographs of the natural world. (I believe the production was influenced by too much time spent perusing kitchen photos on houzz.com.) My tenor was George Gray (now teaching at Temple in Philly), and I remember thinking "Why do I not have Jay Hunter Morris to sing with?" Maybe I did, and Gray was the cover? I think I was a cover, because the rehearsal was not expected.

Our director was a famous soprano, now retired, though I don't recall who. I remember wanting some coaching on the character; somehow we wandered off into a discussion of Carmen and how that title character was similar to Brünnhilde. Or maybe to Isolde?? In any case: no she is not!

And then Barack Obama appeared on stage to wish me luck and give me a little peck on the forehead!

(I will not be singing Brünnhilde any time soon. Not only do I not have an operatic voice, I am an alto.)

This Can't Go On Forever...

but one can hope it will continue for a while:

CONTACT!  

THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S NEW-MUSIC SERIES
Season’s Second Program To Feature WORLD PREMIERE of  ELLIOTT CARTER’s Two Controversies and a Conversation,U.S. PREMIERE of MICHAEL JARRELL’s NACHLESE Vb: Liederzyklus,
And PIERRE BOULEZ’s ... explosante-fixe …  

Friday, June 8, 2012, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Saturday, June 9, 2012, at Peter Norton Symphony Space  

DAVID ROBERTSON To Conduct Both Concerts
WNYC’s JOHN SCHAEFER To Host June 8 Performance 

(emphasis mine. No, I have no idea why MD Alan Gilbert isn't conducting this program.)

He's Back!!

Proper Discord is at it again.

Not only that, he has fully decloaked. (He's a big shot, it turns out.)

Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak, illustrator and designer, died yesterday at 83. He designed opera productions and his seminal book Where the Wild Things Are became an opera by Oliver Knussen.

Roman Totenberg

The great violinist and teacher died yesterday morning at age 101. His NY Times obit is here; at NPR, his daughter Nina has a fond and touching remembrance. He never retired, and as students heard that his kidneys were failing, they flew in to say goodbye. He had them play for him and even taught some lessons on his deathbed.

If You Missed SF Opera's Trittico....

....you have another chance to see it, in HD at the Sundance Kabuki Cinema in San Francisco:


1881 Post Street at Fillmore 
Tuesday,May 15 (7pm)  
Saturday, May 19 (10:30am) (This is opposite the Met rebroadcast of Goetterdaemmerung)


(I liked it so much I saw it three times in the theater. Yes, it was that good, with standout performances from Paolo Gavanelli, Patricia Racette (as all three heroines), David Lomeli, and the unbelievable Ewa Podles. Go see it! Wonderful staging, great casts.)

In Darkness

It's not often that God Himself appears on stage in San Francisco, but that is pretty much what we got a couple of weeks ago at Matthias Goerne's recital. Yes, Lief Ove Andsnes was also on stage, but I doubt many people were there for the pianist, as good as he is, and as happy a collaborator as he was on this occasion. No, it was the singer who got us in the door and utterly dominated the program.

What a program: songs by Mahler and Shostakovich, mostly grim, many about death. I'll put the full list at the end of this posting, though not in the order in which they were sung. The Mahler songs were from Kindertotenlieder, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and the Rückert-Lieder, the Shostakovich from his Suite on Verses of Michaelangelo, Op. 145. I expect the Mahler songs are more familiar than the Shostakovich, especially because several appear in Mahler's orchestral song cycles or symphonies.

I have considered Goerne a great singer since his appearance as the baritone soloist a few years ago in Brahms's German Requiem at SF Symphony; where other singers tend to swing for the fences in "Herr, lehre doch mich," Goerne instead took an introspective approach, pulling the audience in to him rather than projecting outward. And that is the approach he took in this recital: I have never heard more intimate and inward singing from anyone, and rarely have I heard a singer maintain such perfection of line and tone throughout. I know that he breathed, but every song registered as an unbroken whole. He sang at a multitude of levels of piano and mezzo-piano, all with exceptionally beautiful tone, breaking to forte only occasionally and with devastating effect.

A breathtakingly beautiful and musical recital, in other words. I wish he'd hoisted a few of the songs to a higher key, because he has a spectacular high register and because many of the songs lay extremely low. But that's a tiny quibble about a near-perfect recital.

MAHLER: Ich atment' einen linden Duft; Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen; Es sungen drei Engel; Das irdische Leben; Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen; Wenn dein Mütterlein; Urlicht; Ich bin de Welt abhanden gekommen; Revelge; and Der Tamboursg'sellSHOSTAKOVICH: Morning, Op. 145, No. 2; Separation, Op. 145, No. 4; Night, Op. 145, No. 9;Eternity, Op. 145, No. 11; Dante, Op. 145, No. 6; and Death, Op. 145, No. 10 Encore: Beethoven, An die Hoffnung

Zachary Woolfe on the Met HD Broadcasts

Zachary Woolfe has a couple of long pieces in the Times about the Met HD broadcasts and their effects. I highly recommend reading them:

• I'm Ready for My Close-Up, Mr. Puccini
• The Screen Can't Hear When You Yell 'Bravo'

They're really good and mostly I think he is right on. But I'm dubious when he implies that the HD broadcasts might be responsible or partly responsible for wan or lukewarm applause in house at the Met. Isn't it far more likely that lukewarm performances are responsible for that? 

Help Me, Please

Another concert pile-up is on the way.

• New Century Chamber Orchestra, including Zwillich premier, May 10-13
• SFS, Barbary Coast and Beyond, a crazy and highly entertaining-looking potpourri concert, May 10-12, with MTT and an assortment of soloists including Laura Claycomb
• Kronos Quartet, May 11-12, program called Women's Voices
• NYPO at Davies, May 13-14 (I have a ticket to the May 13 program, for the Lindberg)

Theoretically, I could attend all of those, but practically speaking, I can't. I think it'll be Barbary Coast and Beyond, plus the NYPO. Sometimes I've gotten have fun.

Spoiler Warnings

Dear Opera Companies,

When you're making up preview videos for popular newbie operas, don't put major plot spoilers in the first ten seconds of the film. I'm just guessing that the filmmaker isn't an opera fan and didn't bother to ask anyone, but didn't somebody inside the company approve the preview before you posted it?

When I take friends to that particular opera and it's their first time seeing it, I tell them not to read the synopsis. Some surprises you can only have once.

Signed,

Grumpy

Why We Need an Independent Blogosphere

So Peter Gelb can't make us take down our postings.

If you don't want to click through: Olivia Giovetti of WQXR posted about the Ring; Gelb called WXQR, which took down the posting and now says it was under review already. Dan Wakin is on the case; read Olivia's posting here.

Good move, WQXR, during a pledge drive! And color this the problems of institutional blogging, from Dan's article:

Ms. Walker [of WQXR], without stating what her specific objections to the piece were, said it was not a review and “not exactly opinion either,” and after it quoted from the Times interview, “goes on without any substantiation or reporting.”

Ms. Walker, that's what blogging is about.

H/T La Cieca for bringing this to everybody's attention.