The queen of pop gets intimate, Taylor Swift feels the sunshine and Stormzy takes on the world … plus, classical celebrations begin for Beethoven’s 250th
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‘A majestic figure in every sense’ – stars remember Jessye Norman
She was a diva so grand she needed to Rolls Royce just to get across the street. Martin Kettle kicks off stars’ tributes to the great American soprano
Jessye Norman’s voice was a force of nature, a gift from the gods. When you went to hear her sing, you always knew exactly what you would get. Sumptuous, creamy and voluptuous tone was Norman’s trademark, along with a meticulous attention to text and expression. For some, it was all too grand and undifferentiated, like a meal in which the richness of the food was overwhelming and unchanging in every course. But the sheer vocal splendour that Norman produced was the sort of sound that comes only once in a lifetime.
Yet Norman was not just an unforgettable voice. She was an unforgettable public presence – an African American presence – in every event in which she participated. The knowingness that marked her vocal art extended seamlessly to her public conduct. Her choices on Desert Island Discs did not include her own recordings (which, given her personality, they might easily have done) but Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. She was a majestic figure in every sense, and she knew from the start of her career to the end that she was also an embodiment of her black brothers and sisters. She would never be anybody’s second-class citizen. And she never was.
Continue reading...Berlin choir accused of gender discrimination by nine-year-old girl
German capital’s oldest musical institution violated constitution by refusing girl’s application, court to hear
A nine-year-old girl is taking Berlin’s oldest boys’ choir to court, claiming the state-run institution’s admissions criteria are gender-biased and violate Germany’s constitution.
Next week, Berlin’s administrative court will hear that the decision of the State and Cathedral Choir Berlin (SDB) to reject the girl after an audition in April this year was discriminatory because it infringed on her right to equal opportunities in state support.
Continue reading...Can music unite a young nation?
A third of Latvia’s culture budget goes on music education and a new festival aims to galvanise national identity
In the UK it is almost obligatory for a culture minister never to have attended an opera. In Latvia, a small country that takes these things very seriously, the newly installed culture minister hasn’t just seen plenty of operas, he’s starred in them.
Nauris Puntulis a tenor who also had a successful pop career in his 20s, but is now the craggy, grey-haired minister-from-central-casting in the country’s centre-right coalition government.
Continue reading...Beethoven’s Ninth – Farage turned his back on more than just music
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is a powerful symbol of love, humanitarianism and European unity. The Brexit party’s rejection of the EU anthem shuns our shared history
Yesterday, Brexit party MEPs led by Nigel Farage turned their backs while the anthem of the European Union played at a ceremony to mark the opening of the European Parliament. Their behaviour has been met with disdain by many, with #notinmyname trending on Twitter. This was an emotionally provocative act at a time of political sensitivity, and there is something about the shunning of the anthem itself, an instrumental arrangement of the Ode to Joy from the final movement of Beethoven’s iconic Ninth Symphony, that makes the demonstration particularly inflammatory.
The symphony has a long and chequered history: it has been a symbol of both dark and light. A favourite work of Hitler’s (he liked to hear it on birthdays), the Ninth was also used in Nazi propaganda films, and the closing choral section was performed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was also chosen as the national anthem of the Republic of Rhodesia under the racist administration of Ian Smith. This darkness has been appropriated in film soundtracks: the symphony is associated with extreme violence in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and is a recurring motif representing Alan Rickman’s cultured villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard.
Continue reading...Renée Fleming: ‘Plácido Domingo was so frightening. I needed help to get off the stage’
She is the go-to soprano for world leaders, royals and Broadway directors – and she even sang in elf language for Lord of the Rings. The great barrier-buster relives her biggest breaks
She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama and at the diamond jubilee concert thrown for the Queen. She also performed at senator John McCain’s funeral and at Prince Charles’s 70th-birthday bash. Yet here’s Renée Fleming today, sitting in a dowdy London studio, eating salad from a cardboard box and feeling somewhat daunted.
“It is terrifying,” she says, of her part in the Tony-winning musical The Light in the Piazza. “There’s so much dialogue, which is not a skill I’ve practised much. But I’ve always had a voracious love of musical adventure.” Fortunately, her friend John Malkovich has given her some advice. “He told me, ‘You just have to put in the hours.’ That made me feel better.”
Continue reading...White Porgy and Bess cast ‘asked to say they identify as African-American’
Hungarian singers allegedly signed paper to bypass stipulation of all-black cast
The Hungarian State Opera has come up with a dubious way around a stipulation that George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess be performed by an all-black cast: it is allegedly asking its white, Hungarian singers to sign a paper saying they identify as African-American.
The company first put on the opera a year ago, leading to a spat with the Gershwin estate, which stipulates the opera should only be performed by a black cast.
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