After conducting two presentations in March, Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Moest has bowed out of two additional Zurich Opera performances of Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus, citing dissatisfaction with the staging. Although the operetta’s story has nothing to do with vampires or Count Dracula’s castle, Michael Sturminger’s staging uses those devices, apparently solely on the inspiration of the work’s title, which means "The Bat."

In addition to his Cleveland duties, Welser-Moest is general music director of the Zurich Opera.

More from the Chicago Tribune.

From the official Deutsche Grammophon Web site:

“For this recording, Plácido Domingo has drawn directly on the origins of music - the music of the street. Domingo and the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, one of Europe’s up-and-coming ensembles, have chosen the popular song form of the copla which, along with zarzuela and flamenco, constitutes the three-pronged spear of recent Spanish popular music. The copla, like its close relative, the cuplé, is music written by a composer, but one who draws so extensively on the folk music tradition that his music merges with that tradition and becomes indistinguishable from it. The great composers of Spanish coplas can proclaim with every justification: “I am folk music.”

Read the rest of the liner notes and purchase the album online here.

Junichi Hirokami & Columbus Symphony

(Photo: Columbus Dispatch)

The Columbus Symphony has announced that they plan to shut down on the first of June, and will not perform their annual outdoor summer pops concerts.

In April, the orchestra’s musicians voted to reject management’s final offer for next season’s contract. It included a 40% salary cut for all 53 full-time musicians. In 2005, the players had agreed to $1.3 million worth of reductions in the length of the season and in benefits.

More from The Columbus Dispatch.

Additional background here.