More about KZ...

...from my colleague Michael Church in today's Indy, previewing the recital tomorrow in Manchester. KZ will then be in Basingstoke on 25th before the RFH on 27th.

By the way, Michael says that our hero won't record, but our hero told me, when I interviewed him for Pianist magazine, that he's just agreed three more recordings, even though he wouldn't say what they were going to be. Take your pick.

MEANWHILE, back in the pit...a hairy moment during the first night of Glyndebourne's Eugene Onegin when Tom managed to lose his violin part for the new Matthias Pintscher piece (which the LPO is playing at the RFH next week) down a crack between the floorboards. Despite quips about how it might be the best place for it, he transformed himself into Superfiddler and crawled through a subterranean tunnel to retrieve it, causing his colleagues much hilarity as they tripped over his legs.

Weather forecast?

I used to have a theory that if it was cold and rainy for the first Glyndebourne dress rehearsal of the season, the rest of the summer would be heavenly. Yesterday at the Onegin dress, the weather was so horrid and miserable that we picnicked in the car with some soup. Bodes well? Hmm. Last year we did exactly the same thing, for Macbeth, and then it didn't stop raining for a year. Somehow I don't think I'll be getting Michael Fish's weather job at the Beeb.

Will write about Onegin in detail once it opens - for now all I can say is it's a total treat. Meanwhile mad props to Clive Davis at The Spectator and Brian Micklethwaite at Samizdata (a Libertarian blog - !?) for their kind comments and links, and to Gert for staying for the whole of Simon Boccanegra the other night and reporting that eventually Simone gave up and was overdubbed in his death scene by, er, Paolo the villain!

And hat off to Stephen Pollard who tells it like it is about the BBC's coverage of its own recent Young Musician of the Year competition. It was won by a 12-year-old trombonist called Peter Moore, and the reason I didn't write anything about it is that I didn't even know it was on, which seems rather to prove Stephen's point. Sue Tomes has similar words in The Guardian. More of that when I can control the rage-induced tremor in my hands.

There's something in the aria

Behind the scenes at Glyndebourne: my latest, from the Indy today. I'd envisaged it as the music journalism equivalent of Sex & the City, but we had to clean it up a bit. Enjoy!

If you've been directed here from The Queen's Hall...

... please scroll down to WHEN MOSTAR COMES TO SCOTLAND. The video clip in question, of Nigel Osborne's Differences in Demolitions, is there. NOT the one directly below this post, which is of the endearingly nightmarish Florence Foster Jenkins and has nothing to do with Bosnia!

Anyone requiring temporary serious relief from the Marx Brothers potential of all this should please read the fabulous and inspiring piece in today's Guardian by Daniel Barenboim. (Intriguingly, it reveals he nearly ended up being called Agassi instead. Just think, if he'd won Wimbledon...)

An affectionate tribute, sort of

Have a listen:



It was sounds faintly reminiscent of this that sent us scurrying ignominiously out of Covent Garden at half-time yesterday after getting the giggles in Simon Boccanegra. Second-rate Verdi isn't always my tasse de the, and it needs to be very well done to come off. We booked yonks ago when Nina Stemme was listed as Amelia; she dropped out a while back (perhaps she knew something we didn't?) and was replaced by two different ladies, alternating. Reviews were generally good (it's a nice traditional production, which is all most of them want), so we decided to go anyway. Word on the ground has it that No.1 cast Anja Harteros is sensational. We saw No.2.

I forget her name, but I hope she is OK. If she had flu or a Big Personal Crisis, someone else should have gone on, or they should at least have made an announcement. It wasn't just lousy, it was hilarious; and I couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor girl when her big aria was greeted not by applause but by stunned, disbeliving silence.

Nor was the soprano - strained, squally, out of tune and unmusical as she was - the only problem. Lucio Gallo as Simone started off well, but by the interval he was sounding nearly as forced and unhappy as his leading lady. The best voice on stage was Ferruccio Furlanetto (Jacopo Fiesco) who was a stand-in himself. The tenor, one Mr Haddock, did his best under trying circumstances, but there was something fishy about the whole thing. The chorus was behind all the time. The orchestra, under John Eliot Gardiner, occasionally made some beautiful sounds - supple and persuasive strings, chocolatey clarinet, a good effort towards elan - but does that add up to good operatic accompanying? Was it a coincidence that everyone on stage (except Furlanetto) seemed to be forcing their voices? My resident fiddler, who has played this work many times, grunted uncomfortably: "Why are they playing so loudly? Why doesn't JEG take them down a few notches?" Probably, I suggested, in order to drown out the soprano.

There's a minimum standard you expect at the ROH and this wasn't it. Come back, Florence Foster Jenkins, all is forgiven.

Not sure whether to file under Conductor Does Wrong Repertoire, A Case of Mistaken Identity in the Casting Office or just These Things Happen, but we sloped away home for an early night.