AND IN YET MORE BREAKING NEWS
Pictured above: members of the board of Opera Australia enjoying the 2015 season and, above right, the artistic director.
Harriett Cunningham gets the chop and Diana (Cinders) Simmonds will be going to the ball…
It had previously occurred to me to wonder what Lindy the Terrier might have made of Harriet Cunningham’s fine analytical piece (mentioned and quoted by me in “Lyndon Doesn’t Like Criticism - Who Knew!” (today January 2) and previously in “Lunatics Not Taking Over Asylum - Official” (December 8 - see Features archive for full text).
And now we know - in response to a Tweet earlier today, Cunningham writes to me that she too has been given the Order of the Boot by the artistic director and is persona non grata as far as media access goes…
Cunningham Tweeted: “@DianaSimmonds Oh I do feel in good company. I am in receipt of a similar email after my Crikey piece. This cannot end well for Mr T.”
And as Cunningham says, she too has it in writing: “Hi Harriett - Lyndon is very offended following your article earlier this week - I’m sure this comes as no great surprise. So no, I’m afraid we’re not able to offer you any further comp tickets.
“When he’s back from break, I’ll speak to Joel [Meares] about an alternative given Peter [McCallum] isn’t able to review Faust.”
An astonishingly petty way to treat a highly regarded music critic and thoughtful commentator…but given the way OA treats its singers and senior creative contributors, should one be surprised?
Meanwhile, in the aforementioned other bit of breaking news…
Stagenoise.com will be represented and doing its job at The Magic Flute tonight (January 2) on account of amazingly generous and brave offers of tickets from a number of singers, two directors, a designer a librettist, a couple of disgruntled long-term subscribers. Gosh! Will there be more fireworks during the interval? Stand by for the next episode of Bottom Goes Wild in Dorset.
