'Pain without end!'

After attending a performance of “Siegfried” in 1989, I decided that this third chapter in Wagner’s “Ring” cycle was the most unendurable opera in the canon. The reason, I thought, was the title character’s interminable celebration of himself in Act 1.

Turns out there may be more to my aversion. A research team at Germany’s Kiel Headache and Pain Centre writes that the first scene of the music drama “provides an extraordinarily concise and strikingly vivid headache episode” – a “migraine leitmotif” that recurs throughout “Siegfried.”

More on the study from Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard:

http://www.psmag.com/blogs/news-blog/wagner-master-composer-migraine-music-71431/

(via www.artsjournal.com)

Castleton Festival 2014

The 2014 Castleton Festival, staged by conductor Lorin Maazel and his wife, Dietlinde Turban Maazel, at their home in Rappahannock County, will present new productions of two operas, Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” and a dramatic reading of “Don Juan in Hell” from George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman,” in addition to orchestral and chamber-music concerts, from June 28-July 20.

Orchestral concerts include an all-Mozart program, conducted by Maazel, on June 29; all-American program, conducted by John R. Bourgeois, former director of the U.S. Marine Band (“the President’s Own”), on July 4; and programs entitled “Story in Music” (July 13) and “Love in Music” (July 19).

The Castleton Chamber Players will perform on June 28 and July 6 and 19, and members of the Castleton Artists Training Seminar (C.A.T.S.) will give two programs of opera scenes on July 19 and 20.

In a nod to the festival’s Piedmont Virginia setting, a bluegrass concert will be presented on July 3.

The festival, in its sixth season, will bring nearly 200 young professional singers, instrumentalists and theatrical technicians to work with Maazel and other established artists.

Performances are staged at the Castleton Festival Theatre and Theatre House at the farm and at selected satellite venues elsewhere.

Tickets for festival performances range from $20 to $120, with subscriptions and ticket packages offered. Tickets will go on sale Dec. 16.

For more information, visit the Castleton Festival website, www.castletonfestival.org, or call the festival’s box office at (888) 974-0767.

The Castleton 2014 schedule:

JUNE 28
3 p.m. – Castleton Chamber Players. Program TBA.
5 p.m. – Gala dinner.
7 p.m. – Puccini: “Madama Butterfly,” Lorin Maazel conducting. Jonathan Burton (Pinkerton); other cast members TBA.

JUNE 29
2 p.m. – Castleton Festival Orchestra, Maazel conducting. Mozart: violin concerto TBA (violinist TBA); Clarinet Concerto (clarinetist TBA); orchestral works TBA.

JULY 3
7 p.m. – Bluegrass concert. Artists TBA.

JULY 4
2 p.m. – “All-American Concert,” John R. Bourgeois conducting. Program TBA.

JULY 5
7 p.m. – Mozart: “Don Giovanni,” Maazel conducting. Javier Arrey (Don Giovanni); other cast members TBA.

JULY 6
11 a.m. – Castleton Chamber Players. Program TBA.
2 p.m. – “Madama Butterfly.”

JULY 11
8 p.m. – “Madama Butterfly.”

JULY 12
3 p.m. – “Don Juan in Hell,” dramatic reading from George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman.” Cast TBA.
7 p.m. – “Don Giovanni.”

JULY 13
2 p.m. – Castleton Festival Orchestra, Maazel conducting. “Story in Music.” Prokofiev: “Peter and the Wolf;” Lorin Maazel: “The Giving Tree,” “The Empty Pot,” “Vapours and Capers” (soloists TBA).

JULY 18
8 p.m. – “Don Giovanni.”

JULY 19
11 a.m. – “C.A.T.S. Spectacular,” with Castleton Artists Training Seminar participants. Opera scenes TBA.
4 p.m. – Castleton Chamber Players. Program TBA.
7 p.m. – Castleton Festival Orchestra, Maazel and Rafael Payare conducting. “Love in Music.” Tchaikovsky: “Rococo Variations” (cellist TBA); other works TBA.

JULY 20
11 a.m. – “C.A.T.S. Spectacular,” with Castleton Artists Training Seminar participants. Opera scenes TBA, with orchestra.
2 p.m. – “Madama Butterfly.”

Which figure is harder to believe?

The parent entity of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestral Association, which locked out the orchestra’s musicians in October 2012 in a wage impasse that continues, reported spending $13 million in the 2013 fiscal year (ending Aug. 31). While presenting no concerts – the players stage their own as Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra – the MOA ran a $1.1 million deficit, reports Graydon Royce of The StarTribune of Minneapolis:

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/235446141.html?page=all

Petersburg Symphony in money crisis

The Petersburg Symphony has dipped into an emergency reserve fund to continue operations. Its budget has plunged since the Internal Revenue Service revoked the community orchestra’s tax-exempt status about a year ago, reports Leah Small of The Progress-Index:

http://progress-index.com/news/petersburg-symphony-orchestra-plays-on-despite-drop-in-donations-1.1597170

Music studies

* Researchers Adrian Hille and Jürgen Schupp, of the German Institute for Economic Research, find that “adolescents with music training have better cognitive skills and school grades and are more conscientious, open and ambitious. These effects do not differ by socio-economic status. Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports, theater or dance.”

The abstract of their study:

http://www.psmag.com/blogs/news-blog/evidence-music-lessons-boost-kids-emotional-intellectual-development-70862/

* A study by a Boston research team, Marie Forgeard, Ellen Winner, Andrea Norton and Gottfried Schlaug, finds that children who receive at least three years of musical-instrument training excel in “auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills” and “vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills.”

Their full article:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003566

(Note that these studies address the effects of hands-on musical training, not the “Mozart effect,” i.e., that merely listening to classical music allegedly makes children smarter.)

* Mary Beth Cooper surveys other studies showing, among other things, that “classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert[ed] and at ease,” while “opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle;” and that drivers listening to music they don’t like or don’t know are safer than those who drive to familiar music or no music:

http://blog.bufferapp.com/music-and-the-brain

(via http://www.myauditions.com/news/index.php)

A season for classics, in self-defense

Slate’s Chris Klimek reports, alarmingly, that the Robertson clan of “Duck Dynasty” has put out a Christmas album, and otherwise bemoans the sorry state of Christmas-themed pop music:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2013/12/new_christmas_songs_from_kelly_clarkson_and_mary_j_blige_won_t_become_holiday.html

This does not qualify as new news.