Brian Dickie

Back to NY

We had a great Thanksgiving somewhat ruined at the end by a really nasty soggy storm now passing through Chicago which has caused me to come out to O'Hare four hours early in the hope of beating the delays.  Well I am praying that I make it sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile enjoy the Lincoln Park zoo lights which we went to last night with a gaggle of young children.  More in due course as the day unfolds!

Thanksgiving in Chicago

I got back safely to Chicago yesterday evening, and in good time to have some Thanksgiving turkey.  This was in part thanks to my excellent cab driver who sped into town. I find that there are many occasions that I have great conversations with Chicago taxi drivers.  They are often extremely well educated professionals from interesting former war zones.  In this case my man was a Bosnian - and an apparent authority on all the subtleties of Balkan ethnic and sectarian issues.  And furthermore, when he arrived in Chicago eleven years ago one of his first jobs was constructing the foundations of the Harris Theater - such intersections!

Anyway he is thankful to here here in America.  And in common with so many of us is looking forward to the regeneration of the US as the major inspiration to the people of the world.  In the meantime I hope you will not mind a little levity on this great holiday weekend.  Look here at this great gallery provided for me by our great friend at the Daily Telegraph picture desk in London, Veronica Hale.  Since she is a descendant of American hero Nathan Hale she is all the more entitled to provide this entertainment!

I will take a few days off the blog -  I will be in NY on Monday, so until then........

Busy day in Berlin (Part 3)

Last night's concert had a dual purpose.  First to celebrate twenty years of the Neue Stimmen competitions.  Secondly to announce a mentoring program for the young singers who take part in the competition.  This will ensure that there is help and advice available for young singers after they have participated - they are not left stranded and forgotten; they are rather members of the Neue Stimmen family for ever!  This was illustrated yesterday evening by the presence of so many participants over the years.  The first winner of all was Vesselina Kasarova, and since she is in town to appear in a new production of Italiana in Algeri at the Staatsoper, she was able to show up.

The whole event was presided over with her usual distinction and elegance by Liz Mohn.  She is the heart and soul, as well as the prime source of energy, for the Neue Stimmen project. And she is backed up by a fine management team led by Ines Koring. 

There were many wonderful moments during the evening and it was such a pleasure for me to see how so many of the young singers that came to the finals these last nine years when I have been involved, have developed remarkably.  Notable yesterday were two Russians, both by chance born in Perm, Anna Samuil and Elena Maximova.

There was a confident contribution from an Australian tenor, Paul O’Neill, who is a member of the Staatsoper studio.  His Flower song from Carmen was beautifully poised.  And we also had two very young winners from last year on parade.

The eminent German baritone, Roman Trekel, an early Neue Stimmen participant, excelled in a wide variety of pieces including a Hugo Wolf song.  And it was good to see Roman’s mother, Ute Trekel-Burkhardt in the audience.  She joins me on the jury for the Berlin preliminaries and brings light and laughter to a normally tough two days.

Indeed the whole evening had a nostalgic touch.  Dominique Meyer, who becomes director of the Vienna State Opera in 2010 (or is it 2011?) is a colleague I had not seen for ten years.  So that was a warm reunion.  We will be seeing more of each other now that he is taking over the Chairmanship of the Neue Stimmen jury from Gerard Mortier.  And my dear old friend, Eva Maria Wieser, pillar of the Salzburg Festival, was there too.  Now that she is also advising Chicago’s Lyric opera she is in Chicago regularly.  As luck would have it she was there last weekend, but I was in London!  But she will be back in January.

I could go on for ever.  But I am now writing this on the flight from Berlin to London where I connect with a flight to Chicago arriving at 5pm Chicago time.  I hope to arrive in time for that turkey!

And now the news is out about Gerard Mortier’s next assignment.  Great news for him and great news for Madrid.

Busy day in Berlin (Part 2)

A long late and enjoyable evening.  I am out of here tomorrow quite early so its too late to write anything complete and coherent now - so patience!  But by the time you in the USA surface on Thanksgiving Day there should be a full report of this evening's proceedings!

Busy day in Berlin (Part 1)

I wandered to the Staatsoper this morning down the majestic avenue Unter den Linden.  How handsome it is - and, as you can see here, not so traffic snarled as one might expect at 10 am.

Brigitte Fassbaender's master class was of exceptional interest.  She is a wonderful teacher with a knack of combining uncompromising rigor with great geniality.  And she is full of tricks - she unfailingly comes up with a metaphor that illustrates a technical point to perfection.  And the response from the young singers was transforming again and again.  And, great artist that she is, her interpretative insights must have been a great inspiration to these young people.

They were members of the Staatsoper's Studio program - and they all have terrific opportunities to perform on a regular basis with the finest casts that Barenboim's house assemble.  And with the great man in the pit as often as he is what a fabulous way to begin your career!

Amongst those who "performed" this morning was a delightful Palestinian soprano, born in Nazareth of all places.  And an impressive lyric sopano with dramatic tendencies from Jerusalem.  And this evening we will have a couple of the other studio members at the Neue Stimmen concert in Bertelsmann's beautiful building with a fine address - Unter den Linden 1.

I was at the rehearsal this afternoon and just made my way back to my hotel - and paused to have a look at the obligatory Christmas Market which every German city has, seen here on this wet evening, still somewhat under construction.  Well its not yet December.....and there will be many more than one of these here in Berlin.

Quick post

I am in Berlin for a Bertelsmann Foundation event this evening.  With music and singers of course.  They have put together an excellent program and I spent last evening at the rehearsal in Daniel Barenboim's Orchestra rehearsal room in the Berlin State Opera. (He is away at the Met conducting Tristan)

More about this later.  Meanwhile today I will have the opportunity of seeing and hearing all the current members of the State Opera's International Opera Studio members when they have a masterclass with Brigitte Fassbaender. 

I am now off to breakfast......

Big shadow

Yesterday was blighted by the early morning news of the death on Sunday evening of Richard Hickox. I was around the English National Opera's Coliseum for a good deal of the day and the shock was of course profound.  He will be missed for his contribution to a wide range of music making, including of course the performance of Britten operas.  He was responsible for the recent fine recording of Owen Wingrave.

I had the opportunity during the day to get a good deal of important COT business accomplished, including a valuable meeting with conductor Christian Curnyn who will be making his Chicago debut with us in 2010.  Then some useful meetings with the managers of some exceptional new singers as well as a chance to catchup with Jan Latham Koenig, who was with us in 2007 for Beatrice and Benedict; he was home briefly in London for a pause in his peripatetic life which sems to take him in an endless orbit.  He is happy to be spending some time at home in the near future when he returns to Covent Garden for the first time for a bit.

And in between meetings I passed by the home of the Mousetrap which has been running in London for the last 56 years.  For more than thirty of those it has been at the St Martin's Theatre.  I saw it during its first year with the original cast including Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim.  It was probably my first visit to a West End theater as a child - but this was not to the St Martin's but to the Ambassador seen here to the left next door - the one with Stomp!

And the highlight of the evening was Boris Godunov at the English National Opera - a fine new production by Tim Albery with a magnificent company cast without weakness, superbly conducted by ENO's music director Edward Gardner.  As is always the case in London there were excellent chance encounters with old friends.  In this case it was Speight Jenkins, Seattle opera's long serving General Director, who was passing through London at the end of a three week European trip;  and my old friend John Burgh, former director-general of the British Council, and President of Trinity College, Oxford.  He is now retired but ever busy especially keeping in touch with his passions of music and opera. 

And the evening ended with dinner with my COT Board member Jim Shapiro, and his wife Joan who had arrived from Chicago yesterday at noon and intrepidly made their way to the Coliseum for Boris.  It was a good opportunity to catch up - when they are in Chicago we are all too busy.  So a crossing of paths at leisure in London was a good bet!

I am off to Berlin later today.  More from there!

Hard day

It has been a difficult one in all kinds of ways.  And its now 1 am in London - so more tomorrow!

I returned to London yesterday morning in time for a delightful lunch by the river (above) at Walton on Thames, a charming town some dozen miles or so from the city.  My elder daughter lives there from where she runs a Djembe school which has become a really successful little business which, in addition to providing her a living, gives her enormous joy.  She has been involved in the West African music world since she was a student at London University and spent a year, as part of her studies, at the Universite de Montreal where there was a vibrant world music scene.  She has been devoted to the music of that part of Africa ever since, and has become a leading player in that world.

I am staying with my old friends Anthony and Camilla Whitworth Jones.  AWJ runs Garsington Opera now having spent a number of years at Glyndebourne, eventually taking over from me as General Director after I went to Toronto as GD of the Canadian Opera Company in 1989.  So we go back - and that going back was celebrated by a lively dinner party last night with other old friends including Lillian Watson, Tom Graham and David Sigall, all still very active at the top of the business in London. 

Anyway a very late night - and I awoke this morning to find it snowing.  It has stopped now - but it is an altogether miserable London winter day.

Day in Sussex

I drove down to Glyndebourne today (seen here from a different point of view last July) and spent a happy hour with Glyndebourne's long serving Press and Publications Manager, Joanna Townsend.  She showed me around the remarkable archives which, in the last 22 years since the archive was formally established and organized, has become a treasure trove of comprehensive documentation of the company's 75 year history.  I wanted to see it at long last because I was much involved in getting it on a formal footing when I was General Administrator of Glyndebourne in the 1980s - it had largely before then been a solo effort by the remarkable Helen O'Nell, a pillar of Glyndebourne since the 1950s, and Jo Townsend's predecesor in charge of Press etc. 

The current (and I think only the second) archivist is Julia Aries who has done a totally remarkable job in the last 15 years or so, following on from Rosie Runciman who got the whole thing off the ground initially.  The organisational effort is impressive - and seems to be a one woman band assisted by volunteers.  Everything seems to be there.  My period at Glyndebourne was 1962 to 1988 and I was thrilled to see all my correspondence carefully stored.....well it may be somewhat embarrassing when I eventually go through it all, if I ever do.  The photographic record is remarkable including work by Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, Angus McBean, Snowdon, amongst many others; and most notably and voluminously of course the complete collection of that great long standing official photographer the late Guy Gravett, as well as the work of Glyndebourne's current resident genius Mike Hoban.  And Mike is digitising and referencing the whole collection for ease of use.  What a task!  Guy Gravett, a great Leica photographer, left tens of thousands of priceless negatives many never published. 

There will be a new book to be published in April 2009 to mark the 75th anniversary of Glyndebourne.  That will be must buy.  It will include much material never seen before.

I then went on to see George and Mary Christie for a cup of tea and very good fruit cake.  George was Chairman of Glyndebourne for more than 40 years, including the whole period I was there.  We normally see each other just once a year during the festival. It was particularly good to see them out of season, relaxed and, as ever, enjoying life.  And an endless source of laughter and gaiety as anyone who knows them will testify!