Student Sues School and Wins
Veronica Kirby, a 22-year-old British vocal student, sued The Christine Holmes Academy of Performing and Recording Arts and won a settlement of £33,000. The court found the school to be in breach of its contract with Ms. Kirby because it failed to provide individual instruction and master classes as promised. The young singer, who left the academy after five weeks to study at another school, was awarded the cost of tuition, plus interest and court fees.
www.cumbria-online.co.uk/viewarticle.asp?id=115169
www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=115169
Music Lessons Raise IQs, Say Researchers
Researchers at the University of Toronto recently found that first-graders who took weekly piano or voice lessons for nine months raised their IQs more than students who didn’t. The musical students improved their intelligence quotients by 2.7 points more than the normal increase of 4.3 points expected from regular school attendance, the scientists reported.
Researchers separated the children in the study into four groups. Group One took piano lessons; Group Two, voice lessons; Group Three, drama lessons and Group Four had no lessons outside of regular school.
The voice students and piano students showed the same level of improvement. The drama group showed improvement in socialization but not in intelligence. [Could we conclude that singers are smarter than actors and directors?]
www.psychologicalscience.org/members/journal_issues/psinpress/Schellenberg.pdf
Carlos Kleiber Dead at 74
World-renowned conductor Carlos Kleiber died July 13 at the age of 74. He was the son of the equally famous conductor Erich Kleiber, who left Germany in the 1930s rather than deal with the Nazis.
A perfectionist who required enormous amounts of rehearsal time preceding his performances, Erich Kleiber’s recordings of Tristan und Isolde and Der Rosenkavalier are said to be among the most important musical legacies of the 20th century.
www.telegraph.co.uk
Shreveport Opera Success
Aided by a $50,000 grant from the Louisiana Division of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, Shreveport Opera ended its 55th season with a budget surplus of $160,000, and renewed its contract with General Director Eric Dillner.
In addition to its regular season, the Louisiana company will premiere the interactive children’s opera Why Dinosaurs Don’t Litter, composed by Susan M. Yankee. The company is set to perform the new work at the Keep America Beautiful National Convention in Washington, D.C., thanks to support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
www.shreveportopera.org
The Wages of Bragging
Have you ever sung a short part with a company that let you leave before the end of the show?
At the beginning of his career, famed tenor Richard Tauber sang Narraboth in Salomé at the Dresden opera. When he had finished his lines and completed his death scene, he was supposed to be carried offstage by colleagues, allowing him to be free for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately, he had spent a good bit of time telling these gentlemen how much fun he and his girlfriend were having while his colleagues were still onstage working.
At the final performance, instead of carrying him off, his friends dropped him at a central point upstage, and enjoyed his vain attempts to attract their attention but not be seen by the audience.
The Mystery Truckload
The scenery, costumes and props for Franco Zefferelli’s Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera traveled to and from the theater in 18 containers, one of which disappeared before arriving for a performance. No one knew what happened to the container, and it has never been seen since.
An interview with some Met stagehands revealed that whenever a new Chinese restaurant opens in New York, members of the crew make a visit to see if any of that lavish production has become part of the decor.
www.opera-l.org Post by Bill Fregosi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cancer Claims Gabor Andrasy
On July 14, Gabor Andrasy, a Romanian-born bass who was best known for portraying villains, died of complications from abdominal cancer. He was 61 years old.
The first U.S. appearances of this black-voiced bass were in the 1987 Seattle presentation of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Between that time and 2004, he sang 127 performances in Seattle, and appeared in various roles at a number of other American opera houses. Mr. Andrasy became an American citizen about 10 years ago.
www.seattleopera.org
Army Recalling Musicians from Ready Reserve.
Because of a personnel shortage, the Army is calling people who have previously served back to duty. Band members are sorely needed because of the frequency of military funerals. Musicians are not enlisting in sufficient numbers to replace all the instrumentalists who are emotionally and physically exhausted from their tours of duty abroad, so players who have been home for some time and who thought their military service was over are being recalled.
www.timesrecord.com/Military/07_14_philpott.html
www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-07-21-musician-call-ups_x.htm
Deborah Voigt’s Little Black Dress Revisited*
When Fatema Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist and author of Le Harem et l’Occident, was on a trip to New York City, she went to an expensive boutique to buy a skirt. The clerk told her that the establishment carried nothing above size 6 and that she would have to go to a special store for larger sizes. The saleswoman added that size 6 was the norm for smartly dressed women in the city.
Ms. Mernissi writes that when it comes to weight, Western women are kept under constraints far stricter than their veiled Muslim counterparts. She notes that many fashionable American women restrict the amount of food they eat all year, whereas Moroccans fast only during the month of Ramadan.
*“It Ain’t Over Till the Black Dress Sings,” Classical Singer magazine, May 2004
www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=3742
