Issue #9

Date: 2013-05-09

The ageing process has started to worry me. Until a few years  ago my main concern was that I looked too fresh-faced to be taken seriously. My fears  were unfounded; age soon slipped through the back door and robbed me of my youthful  skin. Whereas once I was concerned with edgy indie-bands causing a stir, now I’m examining the tradition of having shiny luscious hair – and doing everything I can to keep it that way. Staying youthful is a costly business.

Masking age runs through this edition. In Russia the new 2,000-seat opera house of the Mariinsky Theatre, Mariinsky II, welcomed its first audiences last week. And this was no cheap  enhancement, even with a price tag of €531m, the modern venue, with its slick glass structure was dividing opinion, with  some branding it the ‘Mariinsky mall’.  Perhaps Mariinsky II is, for some, a bitter pill to swallow –  stirring feelings of jealousy and discontent like those in Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, or like the discord between a mother and her adolescent daughter.

Elsewhere a much cheaper project, Linz Opera House, with its  conservative price tag of €185m has drawn accolades. In contrast it is treated as a welcome new arrival to some sensible, modern and frugal parents. In our interview (p19-21) you can read how the executive director and architect hope the venue  will become a hub for the community. 

Also in our focus on Austria, Gunter Rost, professor at Graz University of Music and Performing Arts, writes energetically about how an instrument that was deemed close to the  confines of a retirement home, the organ, has swallowed an elixir and been given a whole new lease of life. His is a vibrant argument and I’m certainly convinced. And the youthful approach to presentation continues; from London Contemporary Orchestra's concerts underground, to Pountney's programming of ambitious new opera The Wasp Factory at Bregenz. A sharp approach is everywhere: in Spotlight,  Jennifer Dautermann talks about classical music’s cutting edge. 

Maria Roberts 

Editor