Some coverage of the way the new Mariinsky Theatre second stage is shaping up.
[Reuters]

This has a bit of a motor going in it (at times):

http://youtu.be/k3Brd77ReLo

Here's a clip from Penny Woolcock's controversial film version of KLINGHOFFER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jw33u9qAsE

Sometimes I wonder to what extent the "weight of the musical heritage" hangs over modern German composers - do they feel "obliged" to honour that heritage?

The obverse side of the same coin is whether having the good fortune to be "born a German" (or Austrian) can prop-up a merely average career?

John Adams' opera THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER gets a fresh outing this month at ENO in London.  Conductor Baldur Bronniman gives his personal insight into the political issues that lie behind the now-infamous piece.

Here's a bit of Heiner Goebbels, just to broaden the range of discussion a little :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi_35BDGUJ0&feature=related

Goebbels has said he is interested in "bridging the gap between opera and theatre", and he's clearly interested in new forms of musical theatre. This in itself is interesting for me, and some of these projects have gone off in new directions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6LU1gCDAAo

In one of the most mistaken articles about Stravinsky ever penned, the LA Times attempt to claim that Stravinsky was intricately linked with the time-zone applying on the West Coast of the USA.

specious

You know those moments in certain operas that you wish would last forever? As you read this, the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson is extending one of the most exquisite — from Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” — to the length of 12 hours. He is doing this in “Bliss,” an effort perhaps best characterized as a work of endurance/appropriation/performance art that was commissioned by Performa 11. It is playing until midnight Saturday at the Abrons ArtCenter at 466 Grand Street on the Lower East Side. If Mozart, opera or performance art interest you, consider dropping by. It is also free.

The operatic moment is the denouement in “Figaro,” where, after three acts of delightful subterfuge and romantic confusion, the count goes down on one knee and asks his wife’s forgiveness. The countess magnanimously pardons him in one of the briefest, most haunting arias in all opera. This beautiful refrain is then repeated but three or four times by the full cast of nine singers. That’s it.
[New York Times]

Near our dacha (which is at Melnikhova, near the town of Chekhov) there is still a lot of public land where anyone can wander, pick berries or mushrooms, swim in the lakes (there are several large lakes).  It's still sufficiently "wild" that there aren't properly-made roads there.

Dostoevsky treats the issue of illegitimacy several times that I can recall.

In THE IDIOT, Prince Myshkin is blackmailed by a man who claims to be the illegitimate son of his benefactor.  But instead of pursuing any legal course against the blackmailer, the "idiotic" Myshkin takes pity upon his circumstances, and even tries to befriend him. 

In another of his short stories - THE ADOLESCENT - Dostoevsky imagines a young man, Dolgoruky, who is the illegitimate son of a an elderly and disreputable womaniser and drinker, Versilov.  The novellla is in fact an analogous microcosm of the Russia of Dostoevsky's own times..  Versilov represents the unashamedly unreformed "old guard", who are very happy in their ways, have a comfortable inherited income, and are quite content to dissipate their time in drink and debauchery, seeing no wrong in it. The son, by contrast, has ambitions ("he wanted to become another Rothschild"), reads books, and believes that hard work and study can attain those ambitions. Being illegitimate, he stands to inherit nothing of Versilov's money - if, indeed, Versilov doesn't blow it all on wenching and vodka in the meantime.  The illegitimacy can be seen as a symbol of the failed line of inheritance between one generation of Russians, and the new generation of which Dostoevsky was a member.

Also in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV there is in fact a fourth brother, Pavel Smerdyakov, who is illegitimate. In a neat homage to Macbeth, Smerdyakov is the fourth of them, and also the murderer.

I may be mistaken there myself, in fact :)  I came across the word when I was still a kid, when visiting Whipsnade Wild Animal park...  we were told that "Whipsnade" was a corruption of "Wibba's snead" - the hunting-grounds of some medieval local bigwig named Wibba.  It might be that I've incorrectly remembered it, or that we were given slightly lopsided information?  It was looking for a word with medieval origins meaning the private hunting grounds of some chieftain of that era.  Perhaps someone else has a better word? 

Thank you :)  Do we know which composition (with Hebrew texts) he's discussing in this interview?

I think what he says about singers understanding the resonances of meaning in a text is very apposite. So often meaning becomes entirely warped through a half-understanding of a translated text.

Michael Finnissy has made a completion of Mozart's Requiem.
[BBC]

Mozart began composing a requiem mass for an anonymous patron in 1791 but, when he died later that year, he had only completed eight sections.

Composer Michael Finnissy, who teaches composition at the University of Southampton, has created his own interpretation of the missing parts.

He said he "imagined Mozart in the present day" to complete the work.
[more]

The Salzburg Festival has commissioned four new works, from composers Gyorgy Kurtag, Marc-André Dalbavie, Thomas Adès and Jorg Widmann.
(CBC)

Yes, that's a different story about the USSR and Sanderling to the one we are used to hearing :)

He was an excellent conductor, and we owe him much.