MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
Now Playing: New York Times and other papers fail to recognize Buffalo Philharmonic as "major American orchestra"
Topic: NEWS performers
Like Beethoven’s Ninth, it began as a soft hum. A buzz, almost. Then, crescendo! Now it’s loud, the local flap over the national media blitz surrounding Marin Alsop’s appointment as music director of the Baltimore Symphony. A big story Monday in the New York Times trumpeted that Alsop was “the first woman to lead a major American orchestra.” What about JoAnn Falletta? Buffalonians want answers. In 1998, Falletta made news when she was named music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. At the time, the Associated Press said she was the first woman to take the helm of a world-class orchestra. 
In 1956 the fledgling Lyric Opera of Chicago hired Bruno Bartoletti, a young Italian conductor making a name for himself in his native Florence. Bartoletti's October 15th departure comes amid the stir caused by Lyric's firing of temperamental soprano for missing rehearsals. 
Despite the firing of Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu a scant four days before opening night, not only did the show go on Monday at Lyric Opera of Chicago, the company's production of Puccini's "La boheme" actually managed to go on as if nothing had happened. As if the internationally acclaimed Gheorghiu had not skipped out on six of 10 rehearsals and jetted off to New York to be with her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna, who is singing Romeo in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette'' at the Metropolitan Opera. As if her understudy, Cuban-American soprano Elaine Alvarez, [photo], who blossomed into a luminous performance on Monday, had been Lyric's choice for Puccini's doomed Mimi all along. 
Alexander Lazarev has been named the principal conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. During his term from September 2008 to August 2011, he will focus on the works of Sergei Prokofiev and other Russian composers, reports the Itar-Tass news agency. The 62-year-old Lazarev was born in Moscow and studied with Leo Ginsbourg at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1971 and 1972, he won first prizes in the Soviet Union's national conducting competition and the Karajan Competition in Berlin, respectively. 
A SCOTTISH conductor who made his name in the opera houses of Germany and the United States, but who for years dropped out of sight from the Scottish music scene, was picked yesterday to lead one of the country's top orchestras. Donald Runnicles, born in Edinburgh 52 years ago, was named yesterday as the new chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, replacing Ilan Volkov, the Israeli 20 years his junior. 
Soprano Angela Gheorghiu, scheduled to sing Mimi in Puccini's "La boheme" at Lyric Opera of Chicago, was dismissed Friday for missing rehearsals, said general director William Mason. The action marks the first time that Lyric has taken such a drastic action since 1989, when supertenor Luciano Pavarotti was banished from the Civic Opera House. 
"Dictatorships work for a reason,'' says conductor Marin Alsop. ``In the old days, conductors achieved their goals through fear. That's not how I work. I want the experience to be rewarding as well as effective.'' When she steps in front of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Sept. 27, she'll have a chance to put her wishes into practice. The concert inaugurates Alsop's tenure as the first-ever female music director of a major American orchestra. 
The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced 24 "Genius Grants" of $500,000 each. Robert Siegel talks with four of the winners: spider silk biologist Cheryl Hayashi; Yoky Matsuoka, leader in the field of neurorobotics; Dr. Linda Cooper, who studied how race, ethnicity and gender influence the doctor/patient relationship; and classically trained vocalist Dawn Upshaw [photo]. 
Anna Netrebko and Nathan Gunn are both hugely successful singers with the kind of camera-melting good looks that many pop idols would kill for. But you're not likely to see them on MTV. That's because Gunn and Netrebko, both 36, are opera stars, who happen to get as much attention for their pulchritude as they do for their vocal prowess...
Northeast Los Angeles is the epicenter of an unparalleled cultural revolution – and its leader is a Latina woman. Sonia Marie de León de Vega is a member of a very small and select group of women in the United States in charge of a high-ranking orchestra. Her mission, she says, is only one: To bring classical music to her community, to Latinos. A consummate orchestra and opera conductor, she is also the founder of the “Santa Cecilia Orchestra” of Eagle Rock. 