Despite All The Problems , The Classical Music Season Has Begun And Is Going Strong !
Yes, too many American orchestras and opera companies are experiencing serious financial difficultes and even some of those in Europe . And to make matters worse , the Atlanta symphony , the Minnesota orchestra in Minneapolis and the Indianapolis symphony are struggling with labor disputes which have kept their seasons from opening as usual . Maestro James Levine is still beset with health problems and will be absent from the Metropolitan opera's roster of conductors for the first time in forty years . The Boston symphony is still searching for the right conductor to take his place as music director .
But the season as a whole has been going strong for a month now, and the young and highly gifted French Canadian conductor Yannick Nezet- Seguin has taken the rens of the August Philadelphia orchestra and hopes are running high for him to revitalize this great orchestra . Riccardo Muti , beginning his third season as music director of the great Chicago symphony , has just completed a critically acclaimed set of concerts in Carnegie hall .
The world's opera houses are set to present an amazingly wide variety of operas ranging over four centuries - a diversity of repertoire unprecendented in the history of opera . Great conductors such as Muti, Pierre Boulez , Daniel Barenboim , Bernard Haitink , Mariss jansons , Claudio Abbado , Valery Gergiev , Leonard Slatkin , Neeme Jarvi , Kent Nagano , Simon Rattle , Christian Thielemann , Riccardo Chailly , Michael Tilson Thomas , and others are very much in action , and young lions of the podium such as Gustavo Dudamel , Nezet-Seguin, Andris Nelsons and others are establishing themselves as conductors of stature .
There is an abundance of highly talented talented young conductors , instrumentalists and opera singers is emerging all over the classical music world , and new works by a wide variety of contemporary composers is being performed . As far as this observer of the classical music scene is concerned , the glass is more than half full , and not half empty by any means . Classical music is very much alive and kicking , and will endure . You can't keep a great art form down !