Things That Make You Go Buh?!? The Hartford Wagner Festival

Adaptistration Singer

It’s been awhile since the last entry into this series and the latest head-scratcher comes from the Hartford Wagner Festival (HWF). If you haven’t heard of them before, it’s likely because the group is a nonprofit startup and has yet to present an event. Long story short; their apparent goal is/was to present annual productions of Wager’s “Ring” Cycle using a mixture of established and early career level singers accompanied by …

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Things That Make You Go Buh?!? The Huffington Post

It’s been more than a year since the last episode in this series, but given the wackiness that is the season of discontent, it was bound to happen. However, the source material for this installment doesn’t come from an orchestra stewing in a labor dispute; instead, it’s the newest leader in lowest common denominator tabloidesque cultural commentary: The Huffington Post (THP).

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Things That Make You Go Buh?!? Craviso To Louisville

The news started trickling in toward the middle of last week but an article by Gabe Bullard in the 9/16/2011 edition of WFPL.com made it official when it reported that consultant Ralph Craviso had been selected by the Louisville Orchestra (LO) and their musicians to become involved in the mediation of their labor dispute. The only question in my mind upon hearing the news was “What, was Governor Scott Walker busy?”

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Things That Make You Go Buh?!? AFM Leadership

What do you call a $10,000 discretionary spending account over and above existing annual compensation, travel expenses, and departmental budgets? Oh, and did I mention that each executive with the mad money privileges will not be required to make an accounting of what or how they spend those funds. If you’re the current leadership of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), you call it Recommendation #24 for changes to the Federation bylaws

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Things That Make You Go Buh!?! CNBC

It’s been a full two weeks since I’ve been able to blog about anything and over that time, I’ve been building up one doozy of a rant. In this instance, the seemingly willful lack of journalistic integrity from CNBC, the self anointed “world leader in business news” is at fault. It isn’t often that the business behind art makes it to television news so I was initially enthusiastic to see CNBC’s report on the economics of opera. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for enthusiasm to degrade into disgust…

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