“The Vienna State Opera continues to bleed conductors. Less than two weeks after the surprise resignation of its music director, Franz Welser-Möst, the French conductor Bertrand de Billy announced this week that he was canceling his upcoming performances there because of differences with the company’s management,” writes Michael Cooper in Tuesday’s (9/16) New York Times. “De Billy’s troubles in Vienna began last season … [after] he walked out of a production of Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ there in March after he lost a battle to retain several bars of music that the production team wanted to cut. He was supposed to return this season, but he told Kurier, an Austrian newspaper, that he was canceling all his upcoming performances at the opera house and would not return there to conduct so long as Dominique Meyer remains as the opera company’s artistic director. The company … not only has to find replacement conductors for the 34 performances that Mr. Welser-Möst was supposed to conduct this season, but for the four performances of Johann Strauss’s ‘Die Fledermaus’ that Mr. de Billy was supposed to lead, including one on New Year’s Eve.”
Posted September 18, 2014
