Cleveland

It is funny to read the news from Cleveland in the New Yorker. Someone has been panning Franz Welser-Möst--the conductor of the Cleveland Symphony and musical director of the Zurich Opera--in the Cleveland newspaper and has been fired for same. I don't think I've seen Welser-Möst conduct in Zurich. However, I did pan him by implication in my review of Arabella on DVD where he was the conductor.

I said:

"Renée is divine as Arabella, but the musical preparation of the rest of the cast is disappointing. No one but Renée comes close to getting it. It's basically two operas--when Renée is singing and when she isn't. Someone seems to have created the impression that singing Strauss is nothing more than pronouncing the words and hitting the correct notes. It is so far from the correct style for Strauss it's embarrassing."

The conductor has to take a significant amount of blame for this.