In Brief: Oceanside Edition

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

• Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille and one of the possible presidential candidates for the Socialist Party in France, says that she would advocate increasing the budget of the Ministry of Culture by 30% to 50%. The funds, she specified, would go to supporting part-time arts workers, building more venues for performance, and creating 300,000 arts jobs. Not that Aubry is a serious contender for the nomination, but I love that saying something like this does not just automatically torpedo her political career. [Libération]


• Favorite tweet of the week was from the press conference about the 2011-2012 season, such as it is, from New York City Opera: "Astoundingly enough, first press question asked at #NYCO1112 was whether Telemann would be played on modern or Baroque instruments." Although this may strike some people like rearranging the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic, I would actually be interested in the answer. [@nprclassical]


• The Telemann opera programmed by the NYCO, it turns out, is Orpheus, a gorgeous piece of music, which we reviewed a few years ago at Wolf Trap Opera. [Ionarts]


• Add this to my already burgeoning list of summer music destinations: the Château de Chambord has inaugurated a summer musical festival, the Festival de Chambord, this month (July 15 to 29). Pianist Vanessa Wagner has directed the first edition, including concerts by Les ­Siècles, Brigitte Engerer, Bertrand ­Chamayou, Olivier Cavé, Adam Latoum, the Trio Wanderer, and Doulce Mémoire. [Le Figaro]


• A rare revival of Fromental Halévy's La Magicienne at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon. [Le Monde]


• For your online listening this week, listen to some of the performances from the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, including the Pražák Quartet, soprano Simone Kermes, and Halévy's La Magicienne, plus Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall from the Abbaye de Saint Michel en Thiérache, a recital by pianist Yulianna Avdeeva, and a Haydn Mass from Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien from the Pfarrkirche of Stainz as part of the Styriarte Festival. [France Musique]


• From the Verbier Festival this week, pianists Angela Hewitt, Stephen Hough, Martin Helmchen, and Evgeny Kissin, Charles Dutoit conducting music by Lera Auerbach, and Angelika Kirchschlager singing Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. [Medici.tv]


• Make your rounds of more summer festivals online: Handel's Acis and Galatea and Natalie Dessay in La Traviata from the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and Così fan tutte from the Opéra de Lyon. [ARTE Liveweb]


• And don't forget the Proms, which opened with a performance of Janáček's unforgettable Glagolitic Mass. Also, Antonio Pappano conducting Guillaume Tell, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani playing the Goldberg Variations, and much more. The broadcasts can be streamed for only seven days after each performance. [BBC Proms]