Glyndebourne baby arrives!

Many congratulations to soprano Danielle de Niese and her husband Gus Christie, chairman of Glyndebourne, on the birth of their baby son, who arrived today. Glyndebourne tells us that mother and child are doing well.

Here's some musical champagne to celebrate...

Mrs Christie changes trains

The soprano Danielle de Niese and her husband, Gus Christie of Glyndebourne, are expecting a baby at the end of this month. The irrepressible Danni had to pull out of The Merry Widow at the Met - "can-can dancing and acrobatic lifts when your waters might break..." didn't seem a good idea, and she couldn't have flown home again. But she's planning to be back on stage for the Ravel double bill at Glyndebourne in August, all being well - and she wouldn't give up the Last Night of the Proms "unless I was dead".

Recently, en route to a charity gala with her tell-tale bump disguised beneath the drapes of a Vivienne Westwood gown, she changed trains at Clapham Junction. A hand on her arm, an "Excuse me, but…" – and there on the station platform, she declares, was Dame Vivienne Westwood herself: "She spotted her dress first and then said – 'Oh, it's you!'.."

My interview with her is in today's Independent. 

Here's a little video from Hello magazine, made last year. (I think this particular journal here enjoys its JDCMB debut...)

An urgent call from Danielle de Niese

Tomorrow, Danielle de Niese is giving a recital at St John's Smith Square in aid of the Sohana Research Fund. Her programme is glorious - from Handel to Fauré and Delibes, Puccini to Gershwin. Book here.

Danni says:

Hey Everyone! (PLEASE FORWARD AROUND!!)

I WANT TO INVITE YOU ALL TO COME AND JOIN ME TOMORROW IN LONDON AT ST JOHN'S SMITH SQUARE IN AID OF A LITTL GIRL CALLED SOHANA WHO SUFFERS FROM RECESSIVE DYSTROPHIC EPIDERMOLYSIS BULLOSA (“RDEB”). RDEB IS AN INCURABLE GENETIC SKIN BLISTERING CONDITION. IT IS PROGRESSIVE AND INCREDIBLY PAINFUL AND LITTLE SOHANA HAS HAD THIS CONDITION ALL HER YOUNG LIFE!  

PLEASE COME AND LET'S CELEBRATE AN AMAZING CAUSE, UPLIFT SOHANA'S SPIRITS AND HELP HER TO BELIEVE THAT WITH OUR AID AND SUPPORT TOWARDS RESEARCH, WE CAN FIND A CURE FOR HER AND THE MANY OTHER KIDS WHO SUFFER FROM THIS RARE CONDITION.

IMAGINE WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO HAVE RDEC: IT IS LIKE HAVING BURNS THAT TAKE A LONG TIME TO HEAL – IF THEY HEAL AT ALL. BURNS THAT FLARE UP TO EVEN THE SLIGHTEST TOUCH.

PLEASE PLEASE COME AND CONTRIBUTE TO THIS CAUSE. YOU CAN SEE MORE ABOUT SOHANA AND THE DEBRA RESEARCH BEING DONE AT:

http://www.sohanaresearchfund.org/

AND

https://www.debra.org.uk/

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS, LOVE TO YOU ALL AS ALWAYS…

DANNI

PLEASE FORWARD AROUND TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE.
XOXO

Booking details here.

Watch 'Don Pasquale' from Glyndebourne

It's a wet Sunday and - while not denigrating what I'm sure will be a fabulous Prom tonight - some of us have already seen Parsifal three times this year. So it's time for something cheery. The visually gorgeous, emotionally sophisticated production from Glyndebourne of Donizetti's Don Pasquale is just the ticket. Directed by Mariame Clément with designs by Julia Hansen, it plumps this masterpiece of bel canto tragicomedy into the heart of a world none too far from Dangerous Liaisons.

It does so by asking one vital question about the drama's essence: why is Dr Malatesta doing this? What's in it for him? Answer: he has a thing going with la bella Norina. Could it be that he's out to trick poor old Pasquale so that Norina can marry the sweet, wimpy Ernesto, be comfortably off and assure her future on the side with Malatesta, an arrangement which appears to suit both of them rather well?

Danielle de Niese stars as an irrepressible and satisfyingly complex Norina, kind-hearted yet determined, caring about Ernesto yet in sexual thrall to Malatesta. Vocally she is strong and colourful, infusing each whirl of coloratura with expressive purpose. Here, in the Independent the other week, she told me about why the bathroom scene presented a few challenges for the cinema relay...

Alessandro Corbelli is perfect as the duped Pasquale - and it is nice that he isn't left wholly in the lurch at the bittersweet conclusion. In the theatre,w hen I went there last week, Alek Schrader's Ernesto seemed beautiful in tone but a tad lacking in amplitude, while Nikolay Borchev as Malatesta proved a baritone full of suitable smoulder and streetwise assurance. Ernesto Mazzola - a glory of a bel canto conductor - creates an atmosphere satisfactorily replete with bubbles. And listen out for Kristine Blaumane's gorgeous cello solo.

It takes a lot to make a Glyndebourne audience clap a tableau upon curtain up; the all-white 18th-century chorus costumes did the trick last week. But - thought for the day here - wouldn't it be wonderful if productions that were not set in the distant past could sometimes produce the same effect? Intriguingly, I have just met and interviewed a cutting-edge opera director - more of whom very soon - who admitted to having a blind spot about bel canto. Chacun a son gout...

The opera is available to watch on the Guardian website, from which I have borrowed it, until 31 August.  

Gramophone needles

Quite a feast at the Dorchester yesterday for the Gramophone Awards.

First of all, it was Benjamin's big day [left]. Since the BBC has moved many of its TV operations, including the Breakfast news programme, to Salford - about 200 miles away from most of the action, eg. the government, a daft decision if ever there was one - he was up north at crack of dawn to appear there. Then whisked all the way back to London just in time to be catapulted onto live Radio 4, for which The World at One was able to cover the awards since the news of them was out early. Next, into the ballroom to accept two prizes, make a couple of speeches and play two party pieces [below], and receive the goodwill of the music industry, which was his by by bucketload.

The indefatigable James Jolly more than lived up to his name as he presented the prizes, aided and abetted by Eric Whitacre and "Sopranielle" de Niese, as someone managed to dub her. Danni treated us to a performance of Lehar's 'Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß', over which our host quipped "I bet they do"... Live music too from the mesmerising violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaya, playing the Bartok Romanian Dances in authentic Romanian Gypsy style; and Granados from Leif Ove Andsnes, who was in town to play at the RFH and came in to collect the chamber music prize, awarded to him and Christian and Tanya Tetzlaff for their glorious  recording of Schumann trios. [Above, he collects his award from Danni.]

There were touching moments aplenty. Think of the filmed interview with Murray Perahia, who scooped the new Piano Prize, proving yet again why genuine musicianship cannot be trumped by anything, ever; or the turbo-charged voice of Joseph Calleja, scooping Artist of the Year. Most moving of all, though, Vaclav Talich's granddaughter came in to accept the historical recording award on his behalf: his Smetana Ma Vlast, given in concert in 1939 two months after the Wehrmacht marched into Prague and featuring a moment in which the audience spontaneously broke into singing the national anthem. There's no other moment like it on disc, said Rob Cowan.

Priceless, too, was the announcement of Record of the Year, which went to the Baroque Vocal category for Schütz's Musikalische Exequien - from the Belgian choir Vox Luminis and its director Lionel Meunier. A towering figure (literally) with a blend of charm and modesty that captured everyone's hearts as he stood, overwhelmed, by the microphone [left], Lionel explained that the whole recording was organised in his kitchen and he could hardly believe he was going to go back to his choir the next day and say "We f***ing got Record of the Year!" 

Plenty of time for chat, gossip and networking in between, natch: a chance to clink glasses with some and say "Better times ahead?" and others to say "Bravi", and others still to reflect on the growing parallels between two of our greatest tenors now, Calleja and Kaufmann (who pre-recorded a thank-you speech for the Fidelio recording with Abbado and Nina Stemme that took the opera prize) and, respectively, force-of-nature Pavarotti and deep-thinking, dark-toned Domingo. 

Among my most interesting encounters was a discussion with a critic who'd come in from the pop culture world to see what it was all about. He was furious. Why? Because, he says, there's all this incredible music, yet it's somehow been sectioned off and the world at large never gets to hear it! The decision-makers in the British media don't include it as part of culture in general, and they should. It's been ghettoised. And not through any fault of its own - millions of people love it when they have the chance. Why keep it out of the mainstream with some cack-handed inverted snobbery that says the general public isn't capable of appreciating it?

One more Gramophone needle: here's the line-up of winners for the final group photo.

That's right, they're all blokes. 

Violinist Isabelle Faust won the concerto category, to be fair-ish; Tanya Tetzlaff features in the chamber music, and Nina Stemme in Fidelio, but the latter scarcely got a mention while everyone was drooling over Jonas's speech and adulating Claudio Abbado who won the Lifetime Achievement award. The two women who collected awards did so on others' behalf: Talich's granddaughter and Perahia's wife. 

Of course, there's a strong feeling that these awards are for musical achievement alone and gender balance shouldn't matter. In an ideal world, yes, fine. But this isn't one. Given the number of world-class female musicians on the circuit at present, how is it possible that only one-and-two-bits were among the winners of so many major awards? 

I still have the feeling that to be fully recognised as a woman musician, you must work five times as hard as the men and look perfect as well. There's an unfortunate double-bind in the music industry: those charged with selling the artists via image doll up the women as sex symbols, only for a fair number of critics to succumb at once, consciously or otherwise, to the prejudice that "they're being sold on their looks, so they can't be any good". This isn't the way it ought to be. 

I begrudge none of these marvellous male musicians their prizes: each and every one was fully deserved. Yet is it now time to introduce an alternative industry award, like the erstwhile-Orange Prize for Fiction, to boost the wider recognition of female classical musicians on the strength of their artistry, not their looks? Sad to say, but the answer is yes.

Girl Power

Hooray for music's powerful women! 

1. JUDITH WEIR AND EMMA BELL ON MISS FORTUNE


Judith Weir's latest full-length opera is heading for Covent Garden, opening on 12 March, and it's the first opera ever to finish (as far as I'm aware) with the heroine winning the lottery. Emma Bell is in the leading role of Tina, conquering a number of different stratospheres (left, Emma atop "the shape"). I talked to them both about creating what Bregenz Festival director David Pountney called "an opera for an entirely normal audience". See my feature in today's Independent, here.





2. DANIELLE DE NIESE TO STAR IN OPERA OF ANN PATCHETT's BEL CANTO


The Lyric Opera of Chicago has commissioned the young Peruvian composer Jimmy Lopez to write the work, which is scheduled for the 2015-16 season. Ann Patchett's novel describes a terrorist attack in a South American jungle in which a group of opera lovers, politicians and a singer, Roxanne Coss, are taken hostage: over the months, attackers and hostages form unexpected alliances. RENEE FLEMING, Lyric's creative consultant, chose the book as the perfect topic for the opera. The libretto is by playwright Nilo Cruz, the director is Stephen Wadworth and Sir Andrew Davis conducts. And Danni, who's much more than Glyndebourne's fabled Cleopatra, takes the lead as Roxanne. More here.

“It’s about terrorism on one level, but it’s also about what happens when people are forced to live together for a long time, and how art can raise their level of humanity as a group,” Fleming said. “Most of us crave a cathartic emotional experience when we’re at the theater, and I believe Bel Canto has the components to do that... I was struck by Jimmy Lopez's intelligence and the way he understands both the problems in bringing this piece to the stage, but also the possibilities that opera as a medium offers for illuminating a story. For example, the orchestra can accentuate the dramatic situation onstage, but it can also convey the underlying turmoil that one might not see. This is something that many composers miss and that Jimmy understands completely.” 

3. JD TO SPEAK AT CLASSICAL:NEXT


The new classical music trade fair Classical:Next, taking place in Munich from 30 May to 1 June, has announced its initial line-up of events and speakers, and I am happy to report that JD is to be on a panel discussing the future of music journalism, along with BBC Music Magazine editor Oliver Condy and the editor of the German magazine PIANONews, Carsten Durer. Classical:Next is a sister production to WOMEX, and if that event is anything to go by, we want to be there.

4. DON'T FORGET TAZ AND ROX's BIG NIGHT

Tonight at the Anvil, Basingstoke, and tomorrow night at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, the London Mozart Players and TASMIN LITTLE (left) give the world premiere of the complete Four World Seasons by ROXANNA PANUFNIK. Having had a sneak peek for Classical Music magazine, I reckon Vivaldi wouldn't know what's hit him. Rox writes:

"In early 2008, the violinist Tasmin Little rang me to ask whether I’d write a series of short pieces for her, accompanied by chamber orchestra. Considering a world where global concern for climate change and seismic shifts in international political landscapes affect us all, we decided to take Antonio Vivaldi’s much-loved 1725 Four Seasons and give the concept a 21st-century twist, creating an entirely new work with each season (lasting approximately 5 minutes) influenced by a country that has become culturally associated with it."  Spring in Japan, an Indian Summer, Autumn in Albania and a Tibetan Winter form the music in this celebration of music across the world, reflecting the many cultures that descend on London for the 2012 Olympic Games." 

5. JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT, HERE'S DARCEY BUSSELL AS SYLVIA


Ahead of her time, Frederick Ashton's Sylvia was created for Margot Fonteyn in the 1950s. Diana's top nymph is not exactly your typical 1950s ideal housewife. I love the power, joy and freedom in Darcey Bussell's interpretation, filmed at the ROH in 2005. Girl Power if ever we saw it! Roberto Bolle is her lovestruck swain. Enjoy.

A good cause at Glyndebourne

If you fancy going to Glyndebourne, getting a look at their new wind turbine (aim: green electric opera?) and supporting a truly excellent cause while you're about it, now's your chance. The mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby has organised a stellar line-up for a special gala on 29 April in aid of Young Epilepsy, Britain's only national charity devoted to children and young people living with epilepsy and other neurological conditions. The evening is being hosted by the actress Joanna Lumley, the woman we'd probably elect president if given half a chance. Money raised will go towards the support of the charity's information service, special school, college, residential homes, medical centre and a new school mini-bus.

Among those appearing are Ian Bostridge, Jason Carr, Sarah Connolly, Danielle de Niese, Gerald Finley, Dame Felicity Lott, Diana Montague, Paul Nilon, Brindley Sherratt, Timothy West and of course Jean Rigby herself. Glyndebourne's general manager David Pickard and music director Vladimir Jurowski will also be on hand.

Jean Rigby said: “Our son Ollie has severe epilepsy and is a residential student at Young Epilepsy. He is now in his fifth year and is very well looked after, contented and happy: learning to cope with the challenges he faces now and in the future. I feel so indebted for all Young Epilepsy has done for him and this concert is my way of giving something back.”

Concert and booking information:

The Young Epilepsy Gala Concert will run from 3pm to 5.30pm, including an interval. Guests will be able to wander the famous Glyndebourne gardens in the interval and experience the history and majesty of Glyndebourne.  Glyndebourne’s gardens will be open to visitors from 1pm. Ticket prices start at as little as £15, with prices going up to £85. BOOK NOW online at the Glyndebourne box office at www.glyndebourne.com

 There are a limited number of exclusive Premier Seat Packages available at £175, which includes a souvenir programme, interval champagne and a post-performance reception with the cast.  Or Premier Seats with Dinner at £250 include an additional three course dinner with wine, previewing Albert Roux’s new menu for the 2012 Glyndebourne Festival season.  To book Premier tickets or for more details call Young Epilepsy on 01342 831261 or email: fundraising@youngepilepsy.org.uk