“…purely coincidental and not intended”
“Zinta Lundborg is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.” [Bloomberg]
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Zinta…you are a FRIGGIN (W)….ITCH…!!
…BEGONE…BEFORE SOMEONE DROPS A HOUSE ON YOU…!!
Thank heavens they did NOT chose Botstein for NYCO.
Geneva moves Günther Rennert into the 21st Century:
All that’s missing is Nicholas Cage.
http://www.geneveopera.ch/fr/spectacle/4444/il-barbiere-di-siviglia/
.
Is Zinta Lundborg simply a Manuela Hoelterhoeff crony? Why the reiterated NYCO chronicle (it’s not The Ring after all). Will the Bloomberg Muse ever forgive NYCO for not choosing Francesca Zambello over George Steel?
“Baker presided over an ambitious attempt to move the company to a new theater in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when it seemed a performance complex would rise from the ashes in downtown New York. That came to nothing….”
One detail worth correcting here: while Baker may have “presided” over this attempt, the impetus was very much Paul Kellogg’s, not hers.
“Mab, la reine des mensonges, préside aux songes…”
I don’t see why Leon Botstein would have been a bad choice. He has produced several operas at Bard and for ASO, knows a thing or two about fundraising, and is a very intelligent man.
As I understand it, he turned them down and then they went after Francesca and then Steely Dumb called from Dallas in tears so “the divine Mary Cronson” (Steel speaking) threatened to pull her moolah if they didn’t dump Francesca and put Steel in place.
Once it again, it’s not who you know…
“I don’t see why Leon Botstein would have been a bad choice.”
I think the conducting could be an issue.
If Mr Botstein HAD become Director of the Company, would he have had the time and/or the opportunty to ALSO conduct the Orchestra..??--and would he have been any worse ( and as much as I like Botstein’s programming choices, I concur as to his less then admirable turns on the podium…) then many of the conductors NYCO uses, now….?
One might speculate that the answers to your hypothetical questions are “yes” and “yes”.
Botstein though would have had some interesting repertory choices. I think that Botstein as administrator/artistic director doesn’t suck. The conducting, well you got me there. Like Eve though, he does have his moments.
You know, Zinta does have an axe to grind but her viewpoint isn’t that different from La Cieca’s on these issues. I don’t think that Cieca is any more of a fan than Zinta is of Mme. Baker and l’affaire Mortier. Zinta is blatantly biased and derogatory whereas La Cieca has more wit and lets the facts speak for themselves. In fact, it was Cieca who first revealed many of these facts. Cieca was working her contacts while the NY Times and Bloomberg News waited for press releases from NYCO that left out crucial information or never appeared.
I forgot to mention that an area where Zinta and Cieca would probably fundamentally disagree is the l’affaire Zambello. Cesca is on the Cieca hitlist.
This particular Bloomberg “writer” (Zinta) seems to have studied very hard under the mentorship of her employer’s namesake …the same whining, petulant manner as the current Mayor of the City of New York ( with the one exception of Hiz Honor’s glorious stand on the Park51 situation…..)
I don’t understand the complaints here — the whining seem all about Zinta, who has quite objectively stated the case. Susan Baker’s tenure has been a barely-mitigated horror story, utter waste and kowtow to Eurotrash with no vision at all, from which NYCO may never recover, certainly not for years to come.
Botstein is not the world’s most exciting opera conductor, but he does have a more rationally creative outlook on broadening the repertory than Mr. Steel has demonstrated this year.
Agreed. Witness his work at the Bard summer festival. I can forgive the conducting in exchange for innovative and exciting repertoire.
Zinta MAY HAVE re-stated the story…but in a fashion modelled after those “dreary bunch of Aunts….telling the whole story right from the begining…” that Anna Russell once talked about…..
To MY eyes…this “report” just had a certain smarmy-ness and hostility against NYCO which I found rather unpleasant (Of course the original story itself was no fairy-tale to begin with…. but her tone was pure nastiness…..)
Has it been common knowledge that NYCO ever considered/approached Botstein? I ask because I don’t remember hearing about it before — which doesn’t mean anything, of course — but I’d like to know if Lundborg, who you say “MAY HAVE re-stated the story,” can be credited with breaking this part of the story — replete with Botstein’s juicy quotes.
It occurs to me that a Botstein NYCO might have echoed the Kellogg NYCO in the sense that the former’s was a kind of adjunct to Glimmerglass while Botstein’s might have been an adjunct to Bard (“What we proposed was a kind of merger”) — not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. Incidentally, one point I had forgotten: Botstein has conducted at NYCO.
If Dr. B. could be kept from the podium, he might be very useful in such a post.
He might also stage a Meyerbeer/Halevy/Offenbach/Rubinstein/Bloch/Schreker/Schoenberg/Copland/Glass season. Or several.