Following a two-week strike, the members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have ratified a new three-year contract with the management. "We'll be on the stage where we really belong," said Donald Koss, a timpanist and chairman of the musicians' nine-member negotiating team. "We have a contract settlement that's fair to both sides."
Contract talks broke down over the issue of reducing musicians' health insurance benefits and requiring them to pay a share of the premiums. Workload was also at issue. The Chicago Symphony is the highest-paid U.S. orchestra, with a $59,280 minimum.The strike forced cancellation of 11 concerts, and marred the debut of the new music director, Daniel Barenboim. So far the orchestra has only played one concert in its 101st season - a free performance in Grant Park.
- "THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER," by John Adams, an opera based on the mid-'80s atrocity aboard a cruise ship captured by terrorists in the Mediterranean, has received a great deal of favorable comment in its performances so far. Also on the creative team are librettist Alice Goodman, director Peter Sellars, and choreographer Mark Morris. It continues a trend toward opera as current events, in contrast to the many historical and mythological dramas that have preoccupied composers for centuries.
For a growing number of composers, too close for comfort is an ideal distance for an opera subject. In addition to "Klinghoffer," whose American premiere was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City last month, the repertory of operas about recent events includes Adams's first opera, "Nixon in China" (1987), John Moran's "Manson Family" (1990), about California mass murderer Charles Manson, and Anthony Davis's "X" (1986), about the black-nationalist leader Malcolm X. And though not about truly current events, Philip Glass's "Satyagraha" (1980) about the early struggles of Gandhi, is close enough to warrant inclusion.
- BOSTON BALLET is settling into its new building, which rose on the site of its former home, demolished last year. The building cost $7.5 million, and stands five stories high. Designer Graham Gund has incorporated a grand staircase starting in the lobby and rising through all five floors.
There as six air-conditioned rehearsal studios, and a grand studio at the top the size of the Wang Center stage where the company performs. (It will also serve as a 200-seat theater if funds to equip it can be raised.) All support aspects of the company - production, administrative, volunteer, tickets - are housedin the building.
- THE ARTS HAVE LOST: Zino Francescatti, at 89, in La Ciotat, France; a violinist noted for his elegance and poetic grace . . . Paul Henry Lang, of heart failure at 90 in Lakeville, Conn.; renowned musicologist and music critic, author of definitive "Music in Western Civilization," 37 years a teacher at Columbia . . . Robert Irving, 78, former musical director of the New York City Ballet.
- BALLET ENTRECHATS: Elena Tchernichova, former Kirov Ballet soloist and ballet mistress of American Ballet Theater, became director of the Vienna State Opera Ballet on Sept. 1 . . . Former Joffrey Ballet star Christian Holder is collaborating with Gary Chryst on a book about life in the company during the '60s and '70s. . . . Eliot Feld received an honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School.
- THE MOISEYEV DANCE COMPANY, the Soviet Union's most famous folk-art troupe, brings 150 dancers and musicians to Radio City Music Hall in New York Sept. 24-Oct 13, with subsequent U.S. tour to Cleveland, Detroit, Sarasota and other Florida cities, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, finishing Dec. 1.
- "ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA" by Samuel Barber was revived by the Lyric Opera of Chicago last month. The work has lain pretty much dormant since the fiasco of September 1966, when it was lavishly (and disastrously) produced by its librettist, Franco Zeffirelli, for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. Since then it has been generally denigrated, though it has its loyal fans, including Leontyne Price, a devotee of Barber's music, who sang Cleopatra at the opening.
Barber's music is enjoying a Renaissance of interest, 10 years after his death. Sony Masterworks offers his four greatest non-operatic vocal compositions in definitive performances: "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," with soprano Eleanor Steber (who commissioned the work) in a 1950 performance; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as soloist with the Juilliard Quartet in "Dover Beach;" the 10 "Hermit Songs" sung by Price with the composer at the piano in 1954; and "Andromache's Farewell," a dramatic scene for soprano and large orchestra, performed by Martina Arroyo and the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Barber champion Thomas Schippers.
RCA has also put out a CD, devoted to Barber's instrumental music.
- LEONARD BERNSTEIN'S dream of establishing an international music festival in Japan was realized in 1990 when he founded the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo. And an international array of musicians attended the second annual Pacific Music Festival at Art Park, Sapporo, and other locations on Hokkaido July 13-Aug. 7.
Michael Tilson Thomas, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, was co-artistic director, along with Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.
Festival activities included concerts, recitals, instrument demonstrations and traditional music from the Pacific area, also training of young instrumentalists by the Pacific Music Festival Academy - 137 musicians from 24 countries. Concert programs included works of Mozart and Bernstein, also many modern composers.
- PHILANTHROPISTS CARROLL AND HARRIS MASTERSON III will bequeath their historic home, extensive collections of art and decorative arts and an endowment fund to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
The home is called "Rienzi" after Masterson's grandfather, Rienzi Melville Johnston, founder and longtime editor of the Houston Post. It will eventually be transformed into a house museum, operated by the Museum of Fine Arts.
Rienzi was designed by Houston architect John Staub for the Mastersons in 1952. In 1974, Houston architect Hugo Neuhaus designed and executed a large ballroom wing. The house is situated along Buffalo Bayou in 41/2 acres of gardens designed by landscape architect Ralph Ellis Gunn.
The Mastersons have specialized in 18th-century English decorative arts and assembled one of the finest private collections in the United States.
- THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL in its 45th edition ran with outstanding success for three weeks in August, to an estimated 1 million visitors, occupying every available performance space in the city of 430,000.
The gulf war scared away many western attractions, who canceled appearances planned years in advance. Festival organizers turned to Eastern Europe, coming up with the Soviet Union's Bolshoi and Kirov opera companies, also Poland's controversial Teatr Ekspresji, noted for its shock value. An outstanding event was "Songs for the Falling Angel," a requiem in memory of the 270 people who died in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie.
Almost as big a hit as the formal entertainment was the fringe festival, with its 1,058 attractions. Receipts last year totalled $2.3 million, while generating $85 million in additional income for the city.
- HOUSTON GRAND OPERA will present a significant production in May 1992 - "The Mother of Three Sons," with stage direction and choreography by Bill T. Jones, music by LeRoy Jenkins, and libretto by Ann T. Greene. All three artists are considered on the cutting edge of their arts. The work had its world premiere in May 1990 at Germany's Stadttheatre Aachen, and has its U.S. debut in October at New York City Opera.