In Brief: Et Subito Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• 
  Michael Kaiser says that unions are not to blame for the predicament of orchestras or other music organizations, but the treatment of donors and subscribers could be part of the problem. [Huffington Post]


• George Loomis gives it straight to the "leadership" of New York City Opera. [Musical America]


• Who owns Spiral Jetty exactly? Well, the State of Utah, for now at least. The former guardian, the Dia Foundation, allegedly did not act promptly enough to renew its lease on the parcel of land at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. [Salt Lake Tribune]


• Holy crap, the executives of major American orchestras make a shitload of money. [Philadelphia Inquirer]


• Wha-wha-what??! Dance critic Deborah Jowitt has resigned from The Village Voice because of a conflict with her editor. Another Cleveland Plain Dealer-Donald Rosenberg situation, you wonder, with powerful board members from dance companies pressuring a newspaper? No. "I do not write enough strongly negative reviews," she says. [Dance/USA]


• It was a week for bizarre interactions in performance. Any sound made by a viola could be cause for a riot, or so would go the old jokes at the instrument's expense. This time, a violist really did cause a sort of riot, provoking another violist in the audience. [New York Times]


• Critic Luke Jennings had quite a night at the theater. "Further down my row a guy parts his arse cheeks to expose his anus to a visibly alarmed woman. Then he fixes on me, and tries to grab my pen and notebook." Yeah, pretty much just another night at the theater in London. [The Guardian]


• A major coup for Salzburg, losing the Berlin Philharmonic but getting the Staatskapelle Dresden instead. They are really much better off in Salzburg with Christian Thielemann instead of Simon Rattle. [Bloomberg News]


• Among many wonderful things (as always) in this week's New Yorker (not to mention another brilliantly written film review by Anthony Lane), some letters written by Vladimir Nabokov during a disastrous American lecture tour in the 1940s. [The Russian Professor]


• How can one possibly keep up with the online listening possibilities? This week, we have a Mahler eighth symphony from the Théâtre du Châtelet with the Orchestre National de France under Daniele Gatti (soloists include Erin Wall and Marie-Nicole Lemieux), the Talich and Ysaÿe quartets and more at the Festival de l'Epau, Marc-André Hamelin's recital from the Festival de Schwetzingen (program basically identical to what he played here recently), the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra playing Mahler's tenth symphony and the Eroica at the Salle Pleyel, and Nicholas Angelich playing the Goldberg Variations at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. [France Musique]


• In online video, Les Arts Florissants playing Lully's ballet music. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Also, Esa-Pekka Salonen and pianist David Fray with the Orchestre de Paris. [Cité de la Musique Live]


• Finally, from the Festival de Saint-Denis, Le Poème Harmonique and Vincent Dumestre performing Te Deums by Charpentier and Lully. [ARTE Live Web]