No Nukes is Good Nukes

The Metropolitan Opera reaches an agreement with its orchestra.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

This protest is fake news. Also its art is © Comedy Central and South Park.

Although there are no performances of the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic on the schedule of the Metropolitan Opera this season. opera goers at North America's busiest opera company don't have to worry about labor negotiations blowing up the 2018-19 season.

Gatti-dämmerung

Noted conductor canned in Amsterdam
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Daniele Gatti con pomodori. Original publicity photo by Marco Borggreve, photo editing by the author.

Another famous conductor's career has bit the proverbial dust. This time it's Daniele Gatti, the Italian maestro with a scoreless, seat-of-the-pants podium style who has been dismissed from his duties as Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

All Summer Long: Superconductor Announces Festival Special

Presenting Our Summer Advertising Sale!

Here at Superconductor we have a need to report on everything that is going on in the tents, theaters and lawns of the Summer Festival Season, as we will be doing on our upcoming guide.

However, we also have another need: advertising dollars.

White Smoke at Lincoln Center

Deborah Borda named new President, CEO of New York Philharmonic
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The auditorium at David Geffen Hall.
Photo © 2017 Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The uncertain future of the New York Philharmonic just got a lot clearer.

It was announced this morning that Deborah Borda will return to the historic orchestra as its new President and Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Borda will start her term on Sept. 15, 2017.

Essay: The Critical Ear

What do reviewers listen for at a classical music concert?
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The protest against silence from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Art by Jules Feiffer © 1961 Random House LLC.

You see us at the Philharmonic, at Carnegie Hall, at chamber music performances, and at the opera. We sit there sometimes scribbling in ugly notebooks, sometimes perusing progam notes or musical scores, sometimes with eyes closed, heads bowed in some sort of deep communion with the spirits of the creators of the music being performed.

Prevent Empty Seats with Advertising!

Announcing our LOW Holiday Rates!

The holidays are here and what better way to show that you love your arts organization than by buying a reasonably priced banner or tile on Superconductor. We are once more offering reduced rates on our banner and tile advertising for the two weeks leading up to Christmas: with a special Messiah discount that' too hot to Handel!

Superconductor by Paul J. Pelkonen is a bespoke classical music and opera publication offering concert reviews, opera reviews, opinion, music commentary, news items and the occasional April Fool's post. Written and published by New York-based music journalist and critic Paul J. Pelkonen, Superconductor has drawn recognition for its coverage of major arts organizations in New York City and elsewhere.

OPB: Off-Podium Betting

With Alan Gilbert's exit, who will lead the New York Philharmonic?
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A giant question mark exists at the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © New York Philharmonic.
Photo alteration by the author.

The decision of New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert to resign his post last week (effective 2017) has rocked the classical music world. The orchestra is facing a huge debt, the prospect of moving out of Avery Fisher Hall in 2019 and 2020 as the building is updated and renovated, and upcoming contract negotiations. Key positions including principal trumpet and concertmaster need to be replaced. Let's not even get into the issue of audiences aging out and their reluctance toward the inclusion of any music newer than Brahms.

Big Changes for Big Orchestra

Alan Gilbert to step down from the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Alan Gilbert will step down as music director of the New York Philharmonic.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 The New York Philharmonic. 

The New York Philharmonic sent an earthquake through the world of classical music today when it announced that Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic and the first New York native to occupy that position will step down in the summer of 2017.

Metropolitan Opera Alters Rush Ticket Policy

Or...why Superconductor will probably not be covering the Met anymore.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

New changes in the Metropolitan Opera 2014-15 Rush Ticket Policy make reviewing
performances in the coming season all but impossible.

The Metropolitan Opera announced today that its Rush Tickets program is being drastically altered for the 2014-15 season. The revised ticket program designed (according to the press release) to allow "expanded, more democratic access to Met tickets for $25" means that Superconductor will most likely not

be covering or reviewing most Metropolitan Opera performances in the 2014-15 season.

"And We Go Into Extra Innings!"

Early morning agreement may save the Met season.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Deliberations continue as the Metropolitan Opera tries to avoid a lockout.
Image from the film 12 Angry Men © 1957 MGM/United Artists.

It looks like there may not be a lockout at the Metropolitan Opera.

In a story announced on Twitter at 6:58am by New York Times reporter Michael Cooper, the Metropolitan Opera and the two unions representing the orchestra, singers, dancers and chorus have reached a tentative agreement.

The Mighty Have Fallen

J & R Music World Shuts its Doors. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Requesciat in pace: J & R Music World

Last year on Superconductor I ran a story about the dwindling list of brick-and-mortar stores left in New York to buy classical music on CD. Yesterday, we lost another one.

J & R Music (and Computer) World, which started as a basement record story and evolved into a  block-long multi-story music and electronics emporium selling everything from blenders to MacBook Pros has shuttered its doors as of Wednesday. They join a long list of closed music retailers: Virgin MegaStore, Tower Records, HMV and Sam Goody to name just a few.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Resolves Strike

Musicians, management reach agreement.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The rest is silence: the empty stage of Orchestra Hall, home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Image from Music Acoustics and Architecture © 1962 Leo Baranek.

UPDATED: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has resolved its labor issues for the moment. A tentative agreement has been announced between the Orchestra Association and the players, meaning that the first part of the 2012 season will go ahead as planned. This includes the orchestra's season-opening concerts at Carnegie Hall under Music Director Riccardo Muti.

Ratification of the contract by all parties was completed on Sept. 25, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times. The new contract will apply retroactively from Sept. 17, 2012.

The ensemble will open the season with a performance of Carl Orff's ever-popular cantata Carmina Burana on Oct. 3.

Allan Kozinn: The Internet Strikes Back

Petition circulates to reinstate New York Times critic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Yes, it's me manipulating images again. Snip snip snippity snip.
(Pictures sourced from Allan Kozinn's Facebook page and Wikimedia Commons.)

Just one day after Norman Lebrecht's blog Slipped Disc called attention to The New York Times' "reassignment" of classical music critic Allan Kozinn to the post of "cultural reporter," voices on the Internet have come out in support of his reinstatement.

The story was covered yesterday on Superconductor.

Allan Kozinn Demoted at The New York Times

Veteran Times critic to become "cultural reporter."
by Paul J. Pelkonen

New York Times writer Allan Kozinn. Photo from his Facebook page.

In a fast-breaking story on Norman Lebrecht's blog Slipped Disc, it appears that respected New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn has been "demoted" to the post of "cultural reporter."

Full details are available on Mr. Lebrecht's site.

Lockout Looms at Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Musicians, management throw down over budget cuts.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Labor issues are heating up in Atlanta.
Image from Gone With the Wind © 1939 MGM.

The plague of cutbacks and labor unrest that has visited orchestras across North America has now made its way south. At the Woodruff Center for the Arts in Atlanta, GA, an ugly confrontation is brewing between the Board of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the musicians of that ensemble.

In an August 9 letter to the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, members of the orchestra's Players' Association outline a proposed 26% cut in total musicians' expenses, a pay cut of $20,000 per musician, and a reduction in orchestra size from 95 members to 89.

The letter furthermore delineates the Board's threat to "lock out the orchestra and cancel our health and dental insurance" if the above conditions are not agreed to. It is added that the Board's decision comes in conjunction with the decision to start the 2012-2013 season in October, (which is apparently weeks later than usual), after the expiration of the players' current contract.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Orchestra

Australian Opera moves the orchestra out of the pit for Die Tote Stadt.

Is this the direction we're heading in?
Image from Real Genius © 1985 Columba TriStar Pictures.

With the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876, Richard Wagner introduced the concept of the "invisible orchestra," having both conductor and musicians concealed in a sunken, tiered orchestra pit underneath the stage.

In recent years, the trend on Broadway is to move the orchestra out of the house pit, to a room other than the orchestra pit, with the sound digitally funneled in to the performance. Many Broadway shows, desperate to sell premium ticket space in their theaters have relegated their musicians to an afterthought, sawing away in some theater sub-basement.

The Sydney Opera House has gone one better with the Australian Opera's new production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Shitadt. Korngold wrote in the post-Mahlerian Viennese style, and required multiple keyboard instruments, triple wind, a large brass section and four keyboard instruments. Add seven offstage bells, wind, percussion, a high-pile carpet of strings and you get the idea.

Met Opera Reverses Field

Metropolitan Opera Guild-published mag to resume reviewing the Met.

by ppelkonen@gmail.com

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows: Opera News will write about the Met!
Image from The Sunday Morning Hangover.

In a move reminiscent of the gyrations of a certain mechanical stage set, the Metropolitan Opera has reversed its decision to crack down on Opera News, the publication put out monthly by the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

The reversal comes following a page one story by Daniel J. Wakin in the New York Times, in which Opera News editor in chief F. Paul Driscoll revealed that the magazine, which has been in business for 76 years, had decided to stop reviewing  performances at the opera house.

Mr. Driscoll's announcement followed complaints from Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb about a review of Götterdämmerung by Fred Cohn and an editorial by ON features editor Brian Kellow chronicling negative audience reactions to recent productions at the Met.

Memories of Herbert Breslin

Luciano Pavarotti's longtime manager dies at 87. 
by Paul Pelkonen

Herbert Breslin (right) and friend. Photo by Alan Malschick from The King and I
© 2004 Broadway Books, Herbert Breslin and Anne Midgette.

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of opera super-agent Herbert Breslin. Mr. Breslin managed Luciano Pavarotti for 36 years, elevating the Italian tenor into a household name. He died yesterday in Nice, France, of a heart attack. The news was reported by my colleague Anne Midgette in The Washington Post. 

Mr. Breslin was 87. 

I want to take a moment to say a few words for Mr. Breslin, who helped a young writer beginning a career in the world of opera. Through his firm, the Herbert Breslin Agency, I was able to do my first interviews with singers and gain invaluable experience as I started in this business.

It began when the Metropolitan Opera chose to cancel a 1997 run of Verdi's La Forza del Destino. Luciano Pavarotti was supposed to learn the role of Don Alvaro di Vargas, which would add the last major dramatic Verdi tenor role to a resume that included attempts at Don Carlo and Otello, operas that were far too heavy for his voice.

New York Philharmonic Avoids Strike

Orchestra, union sign two-year labor deal.

Filling the seats: the New York Philharmonic poses in Avery Fisher Hall.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2011 The New York Philharmonic.

Well, that was close.

The New York Philharmonic narrowly avoided a strike this weekend.

The orchestra, which embarks today on a three-week European tour, almost got on the picket line instead of the airplane. The musicians, who have played all of this season's concerts without a new contract in place, were prepared to strike if a deal didn't get done.

In late-breaking news on Saturday night, the orchestra told Daniel J. Wakin of the New York Times that they had signed a new two-year contract, maintaining their health benefits and giving players a small salary increase in 2014. There is also a hard cap on pension benefits.

Mr. Wakin first reported the news on Twitter, and then in a Times article compiled by himself and Adam W. Kepler. That article is the source of this story.

Mr. Wakin's article commented that this deal was "short, by industry standards."


The orchestra and its musicians had been at loggerheads over the company's pension fund. According to Mr. Wakin's report, management had taken its proposals for "drastic" health insurance cuts and "radical" benefit reductions off the table. Both sides agreed to reexamine benefit issues in 2014.

In signing a deal, orchestra and musicians have avoided the kind of ugly situation that nearly scuppered the 2012 seasons of the New York City Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The City Opera players settled for an extension of their health care benefits with a severe cut in their performance fees. In Philadelphia, that venerable orchestra filed for bankruptcy before hammering out a deal with their musicians.

Tino Gagliardi, a representative for Musicians Local 802, told the Times that management backed down from a scheme to change players' pensions from "defined benefit" to one where the funds would be supported by contributions from the players' paychecks.

City Opera Goes to the Mattresses

Negotiations break down (again). Labor lockout begins.

Union delegates Peter Clemenza (Richard Castellano, l.) and Paulie Gatto (Johnny Martino, r.)
 attempt to find new, innovative solutions to the current crisis at New York City Opera.
Image from The Godfather © 1972 Paramount Pictures.

11th-hour negotiations between representatives of the New York City Opera, Musicians Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists broke down on Saturday night. According to a report on Parterre Box, the negotiations failed after the New York City Opera rejected an offered wage concession at 9pm on Saturday Night.

In a press release Saturday night, Local 802 stated that the opera company is planning to lock out its musicians starting on Monday. That date marks the start of scheduled rehearsals for the company's season-opening production of La Traviata, slotted for a February 12 premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House.

According to a New York Times report published Sunday by Daniel J. Wakin, the City Opera will lock choristers out of planned piano rehearsals, starting Monday. Orchestral rehearsals are supposed to start on Feb. 1.

The lockout leaves 114 choristers, musicans, and conductors without a salary or health care. City Opera press spokeswoman Risa B. Heller says that the company has no plans to hire replacements in the event of a strike. Ms. Heller also maintained that the company still plans its 16-performance season as scheduled.

At the end of the Spring 2011 season, the City Opera claimed to be operating on the brink of insolvency. General Manager George Steel undertook a tumultuous series of changes. The company left its home at Lincoln Center, announced a drastically reduced budget. The City Opera also released longtime music director George Manahan from his contract.

For 2012, the company has planned four operas, in three different theaters located in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Planned offerings include Traviata, the New York premiere of Prima Donna by Rufus Wainwright, and new productions of Mozart's Così fan tutte and Georg Philipp Telemann's version of Orpheus. But all this may be moot without the chorus and orchestra, two key components of any opera company.

But the big story this year has been the company's reluctance to negotiate a fair working wage with its musicians and choristers. The City Opera has offered to reduce orchestra members from a $40,000/year salary to a reported wage of just $4,000 with very minimal insurance. Musicians and choristers even offered to work for free for a year in order to keep their health insurance. This offer was rejected last year by the City Opera.

This story comes on the heels of an on-line plea from composer Rufus Wainwright to save the City Opera season (and Prima Donna, which bows at BAM on Feb. 19. Mr. Wainwright said: "If talks break down and there's a strike, the company will likely be decimated, thus leaving the city of New York with only one large opera house where as all the great cultural cities of the world have at least two."

After this offer was rejected, the City Opera requested the intervention of a federal labor mediator late in 2011. Negotiations have been held under a condition of press blackout. That blackout may be lifting with tonight's published interview with chorus member Neil Eddinger, which appears in its an entirety on Parterre Box.

Mr. Eddinger has thirty years experience in the City Opera chorus, and is a member of the AGMA negotiating committee. He said: "If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you can't afford an opera company. I'm tired of rich people trying to get something for nothing."

He added: "The board would like to traipse around...masquerading as patrons of the arts but they won't pay their artists. NYCO should put up or shut up. And by that I mean, pay or shut down."

Mr. Eddinger's statement seems to respond to Mr. Wainwright. "If George Steel had started his own company to book interesting musical events (e.g.. Rufus) and try to add another facet to our musical-artistic life, I would say 'Go for it!' But to hijack an existing repertory company with a noble history and so pervert it from its original intention is criminal."