In Brief: October Already Edition

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

• Hardcore Cardinals fan Leonard Slatkin helped put together a performance of "Go get 'em, Tigers" at a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert, as Mark Stryker reported this week. GO GET 'EM, TIGERS! [Detroit Free Press]


• The saddest spectacle of all this week was the letter written by Plácido Domingo to the editors of the Washington Post. He took issue with Anne Midgette's review of Washington National Opera's production of Tosca, in particular, Domingo's conducting of the opening night performance. Anne wrote that "All the performances were hampered, indeed sabotaged, by the conducting." It is that word, "sabotaged," that Domingo claimed was "defamatory." For the record, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, among others, gives the sense of intentional harm as only one of several meanings to the word "sabotage," including only harming or hampering, without the sense of definite intention. Having also written reviews of this Tosca -- at two different performances -- I can say that nothing Anne wrote in her review is biased or defamatory. [The Classical Beat]


• As promised last week, watch Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with the Lucerne Festival Academy and Barbara Hannigan, perform Pli selon pli - Portrait de Mallarmé at the Salle Pleyel. [Cité de la Musique]


• Listen to a concert performance of Attalio Ariosti's 1701 opera La Fede nei tradimenti, with Europa Galante (available for only seven days). [France Musique]


• Listen to the finals of this year's Concours de Chef d’Orchestre de Besançon. Anne Midgette was there, on the panel of judges. [France Musique]


• Watch Les Percussions de Strasbourg perform Gérard Grisey's Le Noir de l’étoile. [ARTE Live Web]


• Listen to Nicola Porpora's Vespers for the Feast of the Assumption (1745), with the Maîtrise de Bretagne and Le Parlement de Musique, at the Festival d'Ambronay. [France Musique]


• Listen to Leonard Slatkin leading the season opening concert of the Orchestre National de Lyon. [France Musique]


• Watch a performance of Baroque music from the Jesuit missions among the Indians of Latin America, at the Musée du Quai Branly. [ARTE Live Web]


• You can hear Lorin Maazel leading the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with Janine Jansen as violin soloist, in Bonn. [France Musique]


• Also, hear Mario Venzago conducting the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, with flutist Emmanuel Pahud as soloist. [France Musique]


• You can watch online video of an adaptation of Jonathan Dove's reduced version of Wagner's Ring cycle, directed by Peter Rundel and Antoine Gindt. [Rheingold | Walküre | Siegfried | Götterdämmerung]


• The Arditti Quartet plays recent string quartets by Frédéric Pattar, Christophe Bertrand, James Dillon, and Bernhard Gander, at the Auditorium France 3 Alsace de Strasbourg. [France Musique]


• Finally, Neeme Järvi conducts the Berlin Philharmonic, with pianist Arcadi Volodos as soloist. [France Musique]