Salvatore Licitra Dies Nine Days after Traffic Accident
On August 27, 2011, 43-year-old tenor Salvatore Licitra, who had traveled to Sicily to accept a prize, was injured while riding a scooter in the area around Ragusa. He was taken to the Garibaldi Hospital in Catania. It was a one-vehicle accident, as he crashed his scooter into a wall, according to the New York Times.
The tenor, who had been deemed by many as “Pavarotti’s heir,” may have suffered an interruption of blood flow to his brain that caused him to lose control of the vehicle, said a spokesman for the hospital. He had severe head and chest injuries and was in a coma for nine days after the accident.
The hospital said Licitra’s family agreed to make his organs available for transplant. His funeral was held at the Parrocchiale Santo Stefano church in Vedano al Lambro near Monza, Italy.
www.salvatorelicitra.com/home.php
www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/05/arts/AP-EU-Italy-Obit-Licitra.html?_r=1&hp
Sales of Classical Discs Bounce Back
The Nielsen SoundScan Report for the first six months of 2011 shows that buyers of classical music still like compact discs. Actually, classical music had the biggest sales of all genres (13 percent) over the first half of the previous year, totaling over 3.8 million albums.
Orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony and London Philharmonic are now putting out their own CDs. SFS Media, the in-house label of the San Francisco Symphony, says its worldwide sales of the music of Gustav Mahler in 2010 totaled 130,000 compact discs.
Many individual artists are also selling their own music, so there is little reliance on the once huge recording companies for sales of classical music. Naxos, once a no-frills budget company, now distributes 148 small labels, and Harmonia Mundi is beginning to follow suit. Other entrepreneurs like ArkivMusic are buying out-of-print classical masters and making their own discs to sell on their websites.
www.variety.com/article/VR1118041433?refCatId=16#
German Study Proves That Audience Listens with Eyes as Well as Ears
A pianist’s visual presentation impacts listeners’ perception of his or her performance, according to German researchers Klaus-Ernst Behne and Clemens Wöllner in their writings in the journal, Musicae Scientiae. In 2009, the team studied the visual impact of piano performances on 35 serious music students. Participants viewed videos featuring four student musicians at the keyboard.
What the participants did not know was that the audio of all performances was played by the same pianist even though the visuals showed different players. As had been found in a previous study, performances by
male pianists were said to be more precise and performances by female players were judged to be more dramatic. Even these advanced music students translated body expression into heard expression.
www.miller-mccune.com/culture/visual-cues-impact-judgment-of-piano-performances-35579/#
Patrons Can Now Order Bayreuth Tickets Online
In 2012, opera-goers can order tickets for the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, via the Internet, according to Intermezzo and Musical America. It is the first time that the festival has allowed online ordering. This change does not guarantee that any first-time prospective patrons will get tickets. Usually, one has to request tickets for several years before getting even one—and it will be the same if you request online.
Those who would like to try to attend either next summer or thereafter can register at ticket.btfs.de. This past summer there were 320,000 requests for the 57,000 tickets available. The next festival begins on July 25, 2012. Operas staged will include The Flying Dutchman, Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, and Lohengrin.
intermezzo.typepad.com//intermezzo/2011/08/bayreuth-2012-tickets-go-digital.html
New Opera Company Emerges in Virginia
Peter Mark, who was the artistic director of the better known Virginia Opera for 35 years, has founded a new company, Lyric Opera Virginia. The new company is presenting three operas during the 2011-2012 season, according to the Virginian-Pilot. La traviata, which opens in Virginia Beach, travels to Newport News, Richmond, and Charlottesville.
Having been forced out of his job with the larger company last year, Mark founded a new ensemble that he expects will reach out to different audiences. The situation bears some similarity to what happened in Phoenix a few years ago. That city now has two functioning opera companies and more productions than ever before.
hamptonroads.com/2011/08/new-beginning-peter-mark-and-local-opera
