By Keith Clarke

As the Olympic Games sprinted into the headlines, culture had to take its place in the queue behind javelin throwing and hop, skip, and jump. With the roadshow due to stop at Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, the Chinese authorities were trying to teach their people not to spit on the streets, while the British people were spitting with rage at the mounting cost of the event. After ten years in power, Tony Blair decided it would be good to mention the arts for the first time, and promised that the culture sector would not be robbed to fund the Olympics. A week later, his culture secretary said the exact opposite. Within weeks, they both were gone.

RECORDING AND PUBLISHING
While record company chiefs fretted over plunging CD sales, the wider audience mourned the loss of integrity when it was revealed after the death of British pianist Joyce Hatto that many of her celebrated recordings were adjusted versions of other pianists' work, recreated by her husband. Opinion was divided over whether the owners of the "borrowed" recordings should sue, many feeling sympathy for a man who had just got carried away as he set out to bring a little joy to his wife's last months as she struggled with cancer.

Warner and EMI resumed their uneasy courtship, Warner announcing 400 job cuts along the way and eventually withdrawing, leaving the way clear for private equity firm Terra Firma to step in with a $4.9 billion takeover. The European Commission probed Sony-BMG's pre-nup agreement, and U.K. lawmakers called for a copyright extension on recordings to match the U.S. While the CD sales graphs continued their long journey south, legal downloading was bringing some cheer, though not enough to match the losses. The most optimistic sign of life in CDs was the launch of a number of
“on demand” services providing tailor-made products.

EMI strived to show there was life in the old dog by signing mezzo Joyce DiDonato and Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter, who in 2006 arrived like a bolt out of the blue by winning the Gilmore Award. Fliter reached hearts and minds with a Wigmore Hall recital that produced the kind of reviews that agents dream of.

ORCHESTRAS
The Israel Philharmonic, founded 12 years before the state of Israel itself, celebrated its 70th anniversary as a beacon of hope in a troubled land. In the Netherlands, where the three radio orchestras were pared down to two in cash cutbacks, conductor Jaap Van Zweden made the most of the reformed Netherlands Radio Philharmonic with impressive results.

The Orchestre de Paris announced Paavo Järvi as Christoph Eschenbach’s successor as music director from 2010, effectively taking Järvi out of the running for several major U.S. vacancies.

In a display of collaboration that would have been impossible a few years ago, eight U.K. orchestras banded together in a project to provide every child in the U.K. the chance to attend an orchestral concert for free.

After five challenging years as director of the Association of British Orchestras, Russell Jones left to become vice president for marketing and development at the newly rechristenedLeague of American Orchestras.

International orchestras seemed likely to become a rare sight in the U.K. when a dramatic hike in visa fees was imposed. Under protest from managers and promoters, the government made a partial climbdown.

OPERA
In Bayreuth, Richard Wagner's great granddaughter Katharina declared that she was eager to take the helm from her 87-year old dad, ensuring that the family feud was good for several more acts. The 2007 Festival opened with her new production of Die Meistersinger, marking her house debut as a director and polarizing opinion between those who were vociferous in their disapproval and those who felt it demonstrated her suitability for the  succession.

Berlin’s Komische Oper turned to Texas to find a replacement for music director Kirill Petrenko, appointing Carl St. Clair. Across town, the Berlin Staatsoper announced a $174 million refurbishment starting in 2010 and taking three years.

The Vienna Staatsoper made two new appointments with effect from start of the 2010-2011 season: Franz Welser-Möst taking over from Seiji Ozawa as music director, and Dominique Meyer as new Intendant, a job that was widely expected to go to Neil Shicoff. The decision came after reports that Austrian head of state Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, a friend of Shicoff, had been pushing his pal for the position. Shicoff's disappointment was made plain in the publication of a letter he wrote to the Salzburg Festival explaining his withdrawal from the title role of Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini.

A new opera by Moritz Eggert, commissioned by the Bonn Beethovenfest, created a storm with a major fallout between the composer and director Christoph Schlingensief. The director insisted that people with mental and physical disabilities should be featured in the work, Freax, loosely based on the 1932 Tod Browning film about a troupe of freak-show performers. Schlingensief withdrew from the production two weeks before it opened, but staged a bizarre "comment" during the interval of the first night, using film and live performance by disabled people. It was described by one commentator as "a barely coherent collage of statements about disability, theatre, and politics that played against persistent interruption by the foyer bell."

In Munich a court ruled that the heirs of Richard Strauss must share royalties with the heirs of librettist and poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal for Der  Rosenkavalier, Elektra, and seven other collaborations.

Opera was in court in Ireland, too, when Wexford Opera chief Michael Hunt won an injunction to stop the company firing him. In the end he agreed to go, but on terms more to his liking. The case got less coverage than a dispute between Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and an Australian promoter that became known as the "Knickers lawsuit," Te Kanawa defending her decision not to appear with an Australian pop singer after learning that women threw their underwear at him on stage.

Opera houses worldwide sought to extend their reach with new technology, the Wiener Staatsoper planning to telecast live operas to the public and the Royal Opera Covent Garden stealing a march on rivals by acquiring DVD production company Opus Arte, thereby making all other houses its potential clients. Like the Metropolitan Opera before it, Glyndebourne signed a deal to show some of its productions in cinemas, though on a smaller scale. Two new productions cast a shadow over the Glyndebourne season, with Macbeth played as black comedy and a misjudged dramatization of the St. Matthew Passion.

English National Opera struggled on, lining up more job cuts and staging a couple of turkeys in Philip Glass's Satyagraha and the musical Kismet. The latter brought the company its most savage critical mauling in years, finding itself questioned for the wisdom of presenting a fluffy musical set in Baghdad at this particular time—and for doing it so limply.

The company had more to hold its head up for in a new production of Britten's Death in Venice, followed weeks later by another new production of the work opening the Aldeburgh Festival.

At the Paris Opera, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Da gelo a gelo was accompanied by the staccato sounds of seats being vacated in protest against what was dubbed another Mortier turkey. There were protests in Italy, too, where Teatro Massimo patrons said they were sick of last-minute cast changes, strikes, and cancellations.

In Trieste, Daniel Oren was demoted from musical director to principal conductor in March and quit three months later, charging the house management with "abuse and ill-treatment." In a quote that would not look out of place in an opera libretto, he said: "While I stood on the podium, the general manager's hostile gaze from his box caused me to suffer from panic attacks, so that I repeatedly needed medical help."

There was a happier relationship in Bologna, where La Fenice named 71-year old Eliahu Inbal as music director for the second time--he previously did the job from 1984 to 1987.

Sweden's Drottningholm Slottstheater, with 240 years of history behind it, was facing a very modern problem as funding crises took hold, with British artistic director Mark Tatlow fighting off an attempt by the Stockholm Royal Opera to take over the theater and its budget.

PLACES
The day that Londoners thought they would never see arrived with the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall after a multimillion-pound refurbishment that followed what seemed a lifetime of false starts, dashed hopes, and moving goalposts. All three resident orchestras were on parade for the grand reopening, when audiences got their first chance to hear whether Larry Kirkegaard had managed to breathe life into the acoustic. The result was bright and clear, and the musicians were probably left in a state of shock at being able to hear each other for the first time in 56 years.

Edinburgh cautiously welcomed its new festival director Jonathan Mills, who did not mince words in describing the festival's fiscal position. "If the financial arrangements don't change," he said, "then in 20 years we will probably be in a position of being able only to put on a weekend."

The Scottish Arts Council signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the National Arts Council of Singapore, with links between the Edinburgh Festival and Singapore Arts Festival the first tangible signs of an attempt to strengthen cultural ties and foster understanding.

After hints of a possible reconciliation with its estranged U.S. cousin, the Spoleto Festival in Italy faced an uncertain future following the death of founder Gian Carlo Menotti, the local council threatening to withhold funds unless Menotti's adopted son relinquished some control of the event. It was the usual tale of brinkmanship, with the funds arriving at the eleventh hour, but the question of the continuing existence of the festival remained unresolved in a town where feelings run high.

In Bach's birthplace of Eisenach, Germany, a museum dedicated to his music celebrated its 100th anniversary and added a $5.95 million extension in an effort to strengthen the town’s association with the composer.

China's economic boom continued to make waves in the music business, with a significantly increased amount of touring, and artist managers looking at ways of maximizing the potential of a swiftly emerging market.

WINNERS
"No first prize" seemed to be a trend in competitions, with both the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in Bamberg and the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition declaring that no one qualified for top spot. That was not a problem at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, where 23-year old Chinese bass-baritone Shen Yang enjoyed a resounding success. Days later, the headlines filled with another winning singer--36-year old cellphone salesman Paul Potts, who won a television contest singing "Nessun Dorma." Shen Yang walked away with £15,000 and appearances with Welsh National Opera; Potts scooped £100,000 and a lot to talk about in the pub. He had turned to singing, he said, despite being bullied for it at school.

At the Royal Philharmonic Awards, soprano Kate Royal beat conductor Gustavo Dudamel to the Young Artist award, and the "profoundly intelligent" Vladimir Jurowski landed the Conductor award for the "intensity" of his work with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and as music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

British composer Brian Ferneyhough was awarded the 2007 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in Munich.

In Belgium, Russian pianist Anna Vinnitskaja was announced winner of the Queen Elizabeth Competition. Danish percussionist Mathias Reumert won the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition in the Netherlands.

NEW MUSIC
BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright was given an extra hat to wear, continuing in his job while also taking over from Nicholas Kenyon as director of the Proms. Kenyon's final season before he took over from Sir John Tusa to run the Barbican Centre featured the usual wealth of new commissions. Having got it in the neck for having forgotten women in the 2006 season, Kenyon lined up new works from Judith Bingham, Rachel Portman, and Thea Musgrave for 2007. Also in the season was the world premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony, conducted by the composer. What got more attention in the press was a controversial appearance by popular singer Michael Ball, leading one newspaper columnist to wonder whether this would be "Kenyon's Iraq." An unrepentant Kenyon thought not, stating: "Not so many people got hurt."

John Tavener made the headlines when a work commissioned by Prince Charles in a spirit of ecumenical togetherness upset Catholics, who protested that a lengthy setting of the 99 sacred names for Allah found in the Qu'ran and sung in Arabic should be premiered in a Christian center, Westminster Cathedral. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was in the news, too, though not for his music--the Master of the Queen's Music became a victim of fraud in 2007 in a nasty episode that saw his manager's husband arrested. Sir Peter had already made the news when his attempt to arrange a civil partnership ceremony on his home island of Orkney was thwarted by the local council.

In Munich, the Bavarian State Opera tried to maintain a Cheshire Cat grin while storms of boos rained down on the premiere of Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland. The work had followed as eccentric a course as the Lewis Carroll story on which it is based, having been dumped by Los Angeles Opera during a budget crisis, and ending up in the hands of director Achim Freyer, whose phantasmagorical production was not to the composer's liking. In the event, the work skipped from boos to rave reviews as quickly as a March hare. 

Keith Clarke is editor of Classical Music magazine and a regular contributor to MusicalAmerica.com.