BravuraVox -- The Online Community for the Classical Singer - Newsfeed

Farewell to last of the baby ballerinas

IRINA BARONOVA, one of the 20th century's leading ballerinas, has died at her home at Byron Bay.

Aged 89, she died in her sleep on Saturday night, five weeks after
charming an audience at a ballet symposium in Adelaide with tales of
her dancing years.

Baronova was the only survivor of a trio that achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s as "the baby ballerinas".

Scientific American: Musical Ability Connected to Genes

A team of Finnish and American geneticists has found that that, for
some people at least, music is in their genes. In what the researchers
called the first study of its kind, they found specific regions of
chromosomes that were connected to musical ability. The report appeared
in the Journal of Medical Genetics

The flame of satire burns on in contraversial Candide

Fans of satirical musical theatre and those who have a burning desire
to see world leaders in their bathing trunks (and there must be a
crossover audience) can rest easy. Since last week, Silvio Berlusconi,
George W. Bush and their friends, or at least singers wearing those
familiar masks, have been dancing semi-naked on the stage of the London
Coliseum.

Will The Fly live up to its buzz?

Backstage at the Th��tre du Ch�telet in Paris, technicians are crouched
over the inside-out baboon, its veins and viscera slick in the dim
light. Perhaps to a trained special-effects man it hasn't achieved the
proper degree of inside-outness, but to the layman's eye it looks just
as repulsive as the baboon that exploded in Jeff Goldblum's failed
telepod experiment.

Canadian Opera Company names Neef new director

The Canadian Opera Company has named
Alexander Neef its new general director, almost a year after the sudden
death of former head Richard Bradshaw.

Top producer bows out of Opera Australia

STUART MAUNDER, Opera Australia's executive producer and the director of its new production of My Fair Lady, is leaving the company.

His resignation was announced by Opera Australia's chief executive officer, Adrian Collette, at a party held on Saturday night to celebrate the opening of My Fair Lady. Maunder will leave on January 1, after more than nine years with the company.

'Oldest' computer music unveiled

A scratchy recording of Baa Baa Black Sheep and a truncated version of In the Mood are thought to be the oldest known recordings of computer generated music.

A novel approach to modern opera

Andrew Schulz's new work, The Children's Bach, brings a Helen Garner book to the stage.

LIKE many love affairs, Andrew Schulz's relationship with opera has its
ups and downs. "I have mixed feelings about it and I become very
frustrated at opera performances that are ossified and lack vitality,"
he says.

But it is an art form that always lures him back � he is taking part in
rehearsals for the premiere on Friday of his third opera, an adaptation
of Helen Garner's 1984 novel, The Children's Bach, for Melbourne's
ChamberMade company.

A 21st-Century Profile: Art for Art�s Sake, and for the U.S. Economy, Too

If all the professional dancers in the United States stood shoulder to shoulder to form a single chorus line, it would stretch from 42nd Street for nearly the entire length of Manhattan. If every artist in America�s work force banded together, their ranks would be double the size of the United States Army. More Americans identify their primary occupation as artist than as lawyer, doctor, police officer or farm worker.

Houston Grand Opera receives $5 million grant

The Houston Grand Opera Association, Inc., plans to use a $5 million grant to bring affordable performances to new audiences next season, General Director and CEO Anthony Freud said Tuesday.