In Brief: Yes, It's June!

Your regular Sunday roundup of links to Blogville and beyond.

• Amid the depressing news of mainstream media outlets jettisoning their classical music critics, it was good to hear that WETA-FM's return to an all-classical format (not really a return, since their content is now more exclusively classical than it ever was) has paid off at the bottom line. As Stephen Colbert would say, "The market has spoken: classical music must be worthwhile." [Washington Post]


• Joyce DiDonato has a blog, and she does not even link to Ionarts? After all the critical love I have given that woman... Is it because I had to miss her Vocal Arts Society recital in February? [Yankee Diva]


• Ever wonder what your cat does during the day? Someone in Germany (hat tip to Boing Boing) put a small digital camera on a cat's collar and actually found out. [Mr. Lee CatCam]


• In disturbing news for bloggers and blog readers everywhere, a certain redoubtable Milan-based opera blogger has run afoul of the Teatro alla Scala. La Scala has seriously miscalculated this time. This instantly reminded me of something I read in an article by Tad Friend in The New Yorker earlier this year, about a reality TV show of all things: "Even then, he was candid about the fact that journalism about rock stars isn’t a gonzo expedition in search of elusive truth so much as a mutually wary, mutually beneficial transaction. When Carly Simon complains in the film about being the subject of a hatchet job, Wenner’s character replies, 'Oh, come on, Carly. The only thing worse than being written about is not being written about'." Seriously, La Scala, Opera Chic has done more than anyone else to raise the profile of your company with English-speaking audiences. Back off. [Opera Chic]


• Hoglands, the unusual home designed by Henry Moore for himself, is finally going to be open to the public. The 16th-century farmhouse has been restored to the state it was in during the last 20 years of Moore's life, including the art, fabrics, books, and furniture that the sculptor made for it. The number of visitors will be limited to a few dozen per day. The home is part of the holdings of the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire. [The Guardian]


• In a shocking turn of events followed by On an Overgrown Path, Robert King, founder and director of the ensemble The King's Consort, was convicted by a London jury of 14 incidents of indecent assault over an 11-year period and sentenced to almost four years in prison. (I recently reviewed that group's recording of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers.) King has dismissed the accusations of five of his former students as lies. The Catholic priest scandal in the United States has drawn much-needed attention to the problem of pedophile priests, but these crimes are not limited to priests. More attention needs to be paid to others who work regularly with children, like coaches and teachers, where it is likely that the rate of incidents is just as high. In a worrying development, the judge in this case "did not bar King from working with children in the future, however, citing the 'radical change' in King's life (marriage and fatherhood) since the time of the offenses." That is crazy. [Playbill Arts]


• Andrew Taylor admired an essay by the John van Rhein in the Chicago Tribune about professional vs. amateur musicians. The decline of amateur music-making is regrettable, to be sure: it would make me very happy to see a piano return to every household, along with at least one person who knew how to play it. However, the notion that amateur musicians "love" or "delight in" the music they perform while paid musicians do not is so absurd that I am embarrassed the Chicago Tribune printed it. If we take the paragraph that Andrew quoted in his post and replace all the terms from the musical profession with those from another field, surgery, it becomes clear: "Surgeons who practice for love rather than money can teach even jaded patients something vital about what it means to practice and experience surgery. They are one reason surgery remains a living art." [The Artful Manager]