Montserrat Caballé Health Remains Major Factor In Court Case

Soprano Montserrat Caballé, seen here in a wheelchair while visiting Garni Temple and Geghard Monastery 

back in 2013 with her daughter by her side, remains plagued by court issues in Spain while she remains ill.

"A Barcelona court is to send a medical examiner to the home of opera star Montserrat Caballé in order to verify whether her health problems really are preventing her from attending a hearing to ratify the deal she signed with the public prosecutor and the Tax Agency over fraud worth €500,000. The 83-year-old soprano’s lawyer has claimed that her mobility problems have stopped her coming into court to sign off on the agreement, in which she will admit to having defrauded €500,000 in tax in 2010. In exchange, she will receive a lighter, six-month sentence that will allow her to avoid jail time. The judge in the case has now agreed to a request from the public prosecutor to send a doctor to verify her claim. Several weeks ago, Caballé’s lawyer filed a request for his client to appear in court via videoconference to ratify the deal. While common practice for witnesses and medical examiners when making court statements, it is unheard of in the case of the accused. The judge will rule on the matter once the medical report is available. The case open against Caballé is the result of a complaint filed against her last year by the public prosecutor, which accused the singer of failing to present a tax declaration for 2010 after falsely claiming that she was living in Andorra, when, in reality, her main residence was Barcelona. After arduous negotiations, the soprano admitted to the charges and paid back the €500,000 defrauded, which allowed for the punishment to be reduced to a six-month sentence for tax crimes. The soprano has twice been summoned to formally sign off on the deal in recent months. On the first occasion, she presented a medical certificate to excuse her. But on the second, on May 12, she failed to offer any explanation for her failure to show up. However, her lawyer did appear to announce that there was a 'lack of confidence' between himself and his client, and he stated that he would no longer be defending her. Almost a month later, Caballé appointed a new attorney, who has since presented medical reports to back up the fact that the singer’s delicate health meant she has been unable to attend a hearing." [Source]

L.A. Opera Gets An Admirer In Alleged-Murderer Robert Durst

И смело ей себя вверяю: Durst took a page out
 of Tatyana's handbook and wrote a letter.

"In a scrawling, handwritten letter to The Times, murder suspect Robert Durst doesn’t speak of the serious charges he now faces but instead writes wistfully of his days in Los Angeles. The real estate scion muses about watching the city lights, the hopeless traffic congestion, spending time at a Sunset Boulevard coffee shop and his love of attending the opera. 'I loved watching the traffic come up La Cienega and mush into Santa Monica,' he wrote in his two-page letter, postmarked nearly two weeks after his arrest in the mysterious murder of author Susan Berman, found shot in the head at her Benedict Canyon home 15 years ago. Durst blames L.A.’s political and business leaders for the absence of professional football in Los Angeles, ridicules a performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle as being a 'true example of Hollywood gone berserk' and ruminates on his own medical condition. 'I have said nothing about charges, crimes or trials,' he adds. 'I’m sure you know what your abilities are to visit me when I get to L.A.' But it seems unlikely Durst will be coming to California anytime soon. Nearly after a month after his arrest, the 71-year-old subject of the HBO documentary The Jinx was in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Thursday to plead not guilty to state weapons charges, a case that has delayed his extradition to California." [Source] Experts say that Durst is trying to play crazy. Perhaps he's taking cues from the ID Channel. See an excerpt  of the note after the jump.

Palm Beach Opera Hit With Lawsuit Regarding Raimondi Sculpture

Spirit Ascending by John Raimondi

"The sculpture Spirit Ascending once stood 39-feet-tall, a focal point for a South Florida philanthropist's home and later a piece for the Palm Beach Opera's now-defunct opera house building plans. And it was reduced to a pile of scrap metal, which the artist said was sold for cash. Sculptor John Raimondi filed a federal lawsuit Monday, claiming the opera dismantled the 2-1/2-ton, bronze sculpture in September 2013 without asking his permission to do so, in violation of the federal Visual Artists Rights Act. After destroying his piece, Raimondi claims opera officials sold off the pieces of bronze to a scrapyard for profit. 'It's just inconceivable,' he said. 'I could understand if they were a concrete company or something, but they're in the business of observing and preserving an art form — opera. It's incomprehensible.' Ceci Dadisman, the opera's director of communications, said the organization has not yet been served with the lawsuit and declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday....The Visual Artists Rights Act, which was adopted in 1990, is a federal law that grants certain rights to artists who produce printed photographs, sculptures, paintings and other pieces of art. One of those rights is that an artist's work cannot be destroyed, distorted or modified without the artist's consent. Raimondi's lawyer, L. Louis Mrachek, said sometimes when a piece of art is sold, a Visual Artist Rights Act clause can be included in the contract, which would void the rights of the artist. In the case of Spirit Ascending, no such contract was signed with either Pope or the opera. [Source]

Will Russia Charge Timofei Kulyabin With "Hooliganism" Over Wagner?

Dazed and Confused: A scene from the reportedly 'obscene' production

"Two men went on trial in Russia on Wednesday over their staging of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser opera, which a senior Orthodox cleric complained was offensive to religious believers. Prosecutors said the modern-day staging, which fuelled [sic] anger among Orthodox Russians after it premiered in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk last December, 'desecrated' the image of Jesus Christ. A complaint by a senior cleric led to charges being filed against the head of Novosibirsk's State Opera and Ballet Theatre, Boris Mezdrich, and director, Timofei Kulyabin, who face fines of up to 200,000 rubles ($3,243) if found guilty. The original opera, considered one of Wagner's most controversial with its focus on sexuality and spirituality, was first performed in 1845. The hero, Tannhäuser, goes from frolicking with the goddess of love Venus, to seeking religious salvation from the Pope for his sexual excesses. Kulyabin's production shifts the action to the present day, with Tannhäuser a movie director making a film about Jesus visiting Venus's erotic grotto....'The question being decided now is whether we have religious censorship in our country,' Mezdrich said in court. The case comes three years after a probe against the Pussy Riot punks who were sentenced to two years for 'hooliganism', specifically offending believers, after a performance in a Moscow church. While the two men are currently charged with a civil misdemeanour, they still risk criminal charges on a new offence introduced by Russia in 2013 after the Pussy Riot case -- carrying out public acts that offend believers -- which carries a jail sentence of up to three years." [Source]

Philadelphia Metropolitan Opera House At Center Of Lawsuit

"After A North Philadelphia church that owned the historic Metropolitan Opera House began a partnership with developer Eric Blumenfeld, the pastor had a hard time finding him to discuss the planned $10 million renovation. According to a lawsuit filed Feb. 5 in Common Pleas Court, the Rev. Mark Hatcher, pastor of the Holy Ghost Headquarters Revival Center at the Met Inc., 'was reduced to chasing down his 'partner' on the street to secure a face-to-face meeting with him.' On another occasion, the suit says, Hatcher 'visited Blumenfeld's offices to discuss the project's progress [or lack thereof], and Blumenfeld literally ran out the back door upon realizing Reverend Hatcher's approach.' The suit claims that 'Blumenfeld misled the Church into relinquishing title to and giving him [Blumenfeld] a controlling interest in the Met.' The massive structure, on Broad Street near Poplar, was built for Oscar Hammerstein in 1908 in the Classic Revival architectural style and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The church bought the Met for $250,000 in 1997. It is now worth more than $20.9 million, according to city records, which show that Blumenfeld gained control of the title in February 2013 for $1." [Source]

Real-Life Opera Between Chinese Restaurant & Harvard Professor

All Mixed Up: Bar manager Ran Duan might feel like he is in the middle of an opera plot gone bad.

"Ben Edelman is an associate professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit. Ran Duan manages The Baldwin Bar, located inside the Woburn location of Sichuan Garden, a Chinese restaurant founded by his parents. Last week, Edelman ordered what he thought was $53.35 worth of Chinese food from Sichuan Garden’s Brookline Village location. Edelman soon came to the horrifying realization that he had been overcharged. By a total of $4. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a Harvard Business School professor thinks a family-run Chinese restaurant screwed him out of $4, you’re about to find out. Read the complete email exchange by clicking here. Ran Duan moved to the U.S. from

Plaintiff: Ben Edelman

China when he was 3-years-old. His father had hoped to support the family with a career as an opera singer, but when that didn’t pan out, Duan says 'like all Chinese families we decided to open up a restaurant.' Sichuan Garden opened its doors in Brookline in the early 1990s. A second location followed in Woburn." [Source] You can learn more about Benjamin G. Edelman by clicking here and if you're in Woburn area, check out The Baldwin Bar. The "Read Between the Lines" cocktail looks particularly delicious. Read a Boston Magazine feature on Ran Duan ran in June 2014 and a 2011 story by the Boston Globe reveals his mother was also a promising opera singer.

Looking Back At The Old Metropolitan Opera House

"Most would find it surprising that The Metropolitan Opera Management sued to have their own opera house razed but that is exactly what happened in the mid-1960s. The Metropolitan Opera Association already had plans to relocate to Lincoln Center and they feared the competition that might arise if a new opera company took over the existing Metropolitan Opera House. Part of the reason the association wanted to relocate was because of the opera house’s plain, and what some called ugly, exterior. The opera house, done in the Italian Renaissance style, was even dubbed a 'third-rate warehouse.' What the exterior did not hint of was the building’s lavish interior. The group of wealthy New Yorkers designed the inside to be more extravagant than the competition, the Academy of Music." [Source] Read the whole story and view more pictures here.

Supreme Court Copyright Decision Shouldn't Affect Classics

Opera-loving Justice Ginsburg

"Established opera companies and symphonies should not be hurt seriously by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week upholding a law that moved the work of composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich from the public domain to copyright protection. Timothy O'Leary, general director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, said in an interview, 'It is possible that (the decision) will add some additional costs but not substantially.' O'Leary said that about one of Opera Theatre's four productions each season is under copyright, but that 'we don't make decisions about what operas to perform' based on whether royalties are due. In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress did not violate the First Amendment by taking works in the public domain and placing them under copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be performed without royalties, while copyright protection requires royalties. The law that the court upheld extended copyright protection to works of foreign artists from the early 20th century who created their works at a time when U.S. law did not provide them with copyright protection. In addition to Russian composers such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky, the law also applied to paintings by Pablo Picasso, movies by Alfred Hitchcock and books by authors such as C.S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf." [Source] Check out two pictures of Justice Ginsburg in more operatic settings after the jump.