The mother of all art forms. According to opera lovers.
We already wrote extensively about the name change of the Orchestra of the East in the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra (NSO). The curious opera grant application based on a business plan that carries huge risks had our full attention. Regular partner the National Travel Opera was not amused.
Festival Grenswerk was told on Tuesday 21 February that it must stop after three successful years because it does not match the ambitions of Stichting Enschede Promotie. The festival set up in 2009 was given a thick set of demands by the alderman that it could not meet after a scathing report by this revamped VVV.
This week, the National Travel Opera begins rehearsals of Mozart's Le nozze di figaro. In the bin, the brand-new Netherlands Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jan Willem de Vriend. Business as usual, as the two companies have been working closely together for years and are united in the National Music Quarter Enschede. Only: orchestra and opera company have not been talking to each other since last week.
Thais en Vietnamees poppenspel. Acrobaten, Chinees schimmenspel en Japanse kostuums. Een Chinese dirigente voor een Nederlands orkest, een Canadees regieteam en als hoofdwerk een krap vijftig minuten durende opera van een Russische componist, gebaseerd op een sprookje van een Deense schrijver die zijn inspiratie uit China haalde. Losjes.
Letters from Culture Secretary Zijlstra are dangerous, especially when they are about figures and schemes. And we haven't seen the latest one for now. So right now, it is about 'friction costs' for the cultural sector. These are the costs that subsidised institutions have to incur when their existence ends due to the subsidy freeze. Think redundancy payments, damages, flower arrangements for funerals of suicides and selling real estate at a loss.
The smallest opera company in the Netherlands beats the biggest. Not in visitor numbers, not in subsidy received, but in bringing in sponsorship money. On closer inspection, however, it becomes painfully clear once again that there is no giving culture in the Netherlands and sponsorship is limited to a pittance. A rattling giving law will not change that.
The Netherlands has a new orchestra: the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. At least, new in name. The Orchestra of the East does not seem to be waiting for possible forced mergers, and is already claiming its position as the national orchestra outside the Randstad by means of this striking name change that was made public today before the start of a concert with the Jussen brothers.
Has state secretary Halbe Zijlstra the Lower House lied or misled in June when he stated that rushing through the culture cuts was necessary to absorb friction costs? Or does it just turn out to be improper governance?
The dragon remains tricky. Truly terrifying you never get him, of course, but what looked like a cross between a storage tank and an underground tube was laughable even before kitchy claws emerged from the wall. No wonder young Siegfried had the forchten does not learn and stands there smiling.
‘Kinder!, macht Neues!, Neues!, und abermals Neues!’ schreef Wagner aan Franz Lizt. En na de allereerste Festspiele concludeerde hij dat volgend jaar alles anders moest. Zelfs een geheel nieuw theater achtte hij niet uitgesloten.
The ark as the earth, as a spaceship carrying us through the chaos of the universe to a safe haven. The pole star as the apparent magnetic centre of the universe around which all the stars revolve. No, this is not woolly new age chatter, these are the starting points for Tevot and Polaris, two major orchestral works by Thomas Adès, which had their Dutch premiere under the direction of the composer himself.
An opera based on texts by Nietzsche, and then start with loud laughter and main character N trying to catch two water nymphs. Wait a minute, that's Wagner! Well, at Wagner's Rheingold involves three Rhine daughters, but the similarity is too great to be coincidental. And neither is this one, but in the first minutes of Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos is much more going on. Here is a composer at work who not only plays with text and music, but also with centuries of cultural history and knows how to add jokes to it. It is to get intoxicated.
With the battle between Titans and gods on Mount Olympus, Xenakis opens 1234, a mini-festival in the great Holland Festival. In four concerts, spread over two days, it features Iannis Xenakis central. There is also an extensive exhibition dedicated to the Greek composer, who was a mathematician and architect by birth.
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