While the Beijing Olympics brought nations together in a show of rivalry, conductor Valery Gergiev caused a stir by pinning his patriotic colors to the mast, conducting St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra in an all-Russian program in Ossetia to celebrate a crushing battlefield victory over Georgia. Angered at the Russians’ portrayal as aggressors, the Ossetian-born conductor had argued with the Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili days before at the Edinburgh International Festival.

 

Violinists were much in the news. Maxim Vengerov’s manager vigorously denied reports that the Russian star was leaving the fiddle for the baton as a result of a shoulder injury; Nigel Kennedy dissed conductors (“Why would you want to be waving a stick when you could be playing an instrument?”), and 26-year old David Garrett made his first entry into the headlines when he fell on his 290-year old Stradivarius while exiting the London Barbican Centre’s stage.

 

While Garrett’s Strad was silenced, 40 of London’s Tube stations were piped with hits of the 18th and 19^th centuries in an effort to reduce crime.

 

A German-based quartet broke many taboos in Saudi Arabia by staging the country’s first-ever performance of European classical music in a public venue before a mixed-gender audience.

 

Luciano Pavarotti’s estate was finally settled, the extended family coming to terms with the fact that the cash-poor but real estate-rich singer left debts of a reported $22 million. There was more drama for Pavarotti fans when it was revealed that he had lip-synched “Nessun Dorma” at his final performance, the televised opening of the Turin Winter Olympics in February 2006.

 

EMI was guaranteed a permanent place in the financial headlines after it was taken over by venture capital firm Terra Firma. ‘EMI to Cut 2,000 Jobs’ was one of the first, and they did not get much better as company chief Guy Hands set about a program of slash and burn, pausing along the way to appoint 42-year old Elio Leoni-Sceti as the new head of the music division. Leoni-Sceti apparently established his musical credentials as executive vice president of Reckitt Benckiser, maker of skincare product Clearasil, French’s mustard, Nurofen pain reliever, and other tuneful products.

 

But if EMI was getting the column inches, Universal was giving it a run for its money, starting the year with a lawsuit from the estates of many of its top artists claiming $6.07 million, plus attorneys’ fees and damages, for having been allegedly cheated out of royalties.

 

Perhaps deciding that there was little profitable future in making records, Universal went on to form a classical-music management company, aiming to “develop great artistic careers, create distinctive live events and build long-lasting brands.” Not everyone was impressed. Good for the record company, perhaps, but not so good for the artist, was the view of the Wall Street Journal.

 

Universal was back in the news when it posted a You-Tube ad for medieval chanters and got 100 responses. The Abbey of the Holy Cross monks from Vienna were duly signed. Having sung for Pope Benedict, the 875-year-old order offered the closest thing to celebrity monks a record company could hope for.

 

After a spirited round of musical chairs at Sony BMG, the company announced plans for an online music service to rival iTunes. But then the divorce lawyers were called in, Bertelsmann selling its half share in the company back to Sony in a $1.2 billion deal.

 

Digital derring-do continued to make inroads into recorded- music retailing. In the U.K., music downloads doubled within one year. The new technology forged an unlikely alliance when Steinway Musical Instruments bought Arkiv Music LLC, a kind of Amazon of classical music that launched in February 2002. In broadcasting, the BBC ran into heavy criticism with a number of downmarket classical-music shows, including one where so-called celebrities competed for a chance to conduct an orchestra.

 

Europe-wide legislation limiting noise ceilings for orchestras was finally enforced, offering the possibility of concerts being interrupted by health-and-safety inspectors in hard hats, a clipboard in one hand and a sound meter in the other. Having been given two years to get used to the idea, orchestras worked to meet the new requirements, introducing sound shields, noise monitors and ear defenders, and setting up player committees. None of this made much of an impression on Valery Gergiev, who is not alone among conductors in his insistence that the brass should be parting the hair of anyone unfortunate enough to sit in front of them.

 

The London Symphony Orchestra had more than safety inspectors and Gergiev’s idiosyncrasies to contend with. They arrived for a performance of the Mahler Seventh in France minus their concert clothing, music, and instruments, all of which had fallen afoul of striking French ferry workers. An appeal went out to local musicians, and the performance went ahead with true Dunkirk spirit, principal flautist Gareth Davies playing an exposed solo on a tin flute without a bottom B key. The Hallé Orchestra announced the appointment of 30-year-old Ewa Strusinska as assistant conductor, the first woman ever to join its conducting staff.

 

In April, former San Francisco Opera general manager Pamela Rosenberg announced that she would be quitting her post as administrative head of the Berlin Philharmonic when her contract expires in 2010. But there was a high-profile exit being talked of in hushed tones: “Berlin Phil Musicians May Vote Sir Simon Out” was the shock-horror headline over the story of how Maestro Rattle had given some of the orchestra’s old guard a fit of the vapors with some of his program choices. In the event, Rattle lived to fight another day.

 

With all those sparks flying, it was probably no surprise when the Berlin Philharmonic’s home caught fire. It was two weeks before the orchestra could return, during which time Rattle further raised some musicians’ blood pressure by programming Stockhausen and Messiaen in an old aircraft hanger normally used for rock concerts.

 

In neighboring Switzerland, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande Music Director Marek Janowski, three seasons into the job, pledged to put Ernest Ansermet’s old band back on the map.

 

Orchestras with new faces on the podium included the Prague Philharmonia, naming Jakub Hrusa as music director and chief conductor; the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, with Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko as general music director; and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, appointing violinist Nikolaj Znaider in the new position of principal guest conductor.

 

Jan Raes was named new executive director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ole Baekhoej became artistic and executive director of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/Danish Radio, and Gil Shohat resigned as music director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra.

 

Vienna’s venerable Staatsoper may well have been feeling its age in Spring 2008. In April it was said to be out-paced by the neighboring Theater an der Wien; in May its grunge Siegfried got a critical thumbs down; in June it was blaming dismal box-office figures on the million soccer fans who had flooded the city for the European Championships.

 

The Staatsoper Siegfried was not alone in attracting cat calls. Lohengrin was booed in Geneva; the Vienna Kammeroper’s production of Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert was dismissed as poor choice, and it was opined that the Berlin Staatsoper’s new production of Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia was more evidence that the company was rudderless.

 

Things were more exciting in Bayreuth—offstage, at least—when the 88-year old Wolfgang Wagner finally decided to hang up his Tarnhelm after 57 years. After a truly Wagnerian struggle, half-sisters Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier were named to succeed their father, but not before a Richard Bauer stepped in with a bid, claiming to be the illegitimate son of Wolfgang’s brother Wieland, who died in 1966.

 

There had already been a quieter revolution at Bayreuth with the announcement that it would join the 21st century by streaming a live a performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. But with virtual tickets at $76 it was not so much Bayreuth for everyone as Bayreuth for everyone who could afford it.

 

Streaming and screening remained the buzzwords for the world’s opera houses. The Royal Opera followed the Met, the San Francisco Opera, the Salzburg Festival, and La Scala by joining the popcorn set and venturing into U.S. cinemas with Carmen and three ballets.

 

Glyndebourne, which has also been presenting its work in U.K. cinema chains, went green, overturning local protests to gain permission to build a wind turbine.

 

The Royal Opera season was notable for the return of the soprano previously barred for being too big for a little black dress. Deborah Voigt Lite appeared, in That Dress, to mixed reviews. Voigt’s return at least served to deflect attention caused by Royal Opera chief Tony Hall’s unwitting assertion that “We want to get that buzzy, cool crowd to come in.” The 62-year-old Hall, said Opera magazine editor John Allison, was “having a mid-life crisis.”

 

English National Opera Artistic Director John Berry announced plans to “reach out to film-literate young people with cutting-edge work.” One of the results was a short season at the trendy Young Vic Theatre where Olga Neuwirth’s music-theater version of David Lynch’s psychological celluloid thriller Lost Highwayproved an entertaining and faithful transferal of Lynch’s temporal displacements and ambiguities.

 

Also stepping outside the mainstream was Scottish Opera’s program of five 15-minute operas, pairing well-known authors with composers and swiftly selling out.

 

In Milan it was strike season again, La Scala losing its opening performances of La Bohème.

Soprano Anna Netrebko, Musical America’s 2008 Musician of the Year, rewrote her diary with the news that she was pregnant. (She gave birth in September.) Her fiancé Erwin Schrott settled out of court when London solicitor and impresario Ian Rosenblatt threatened to sue for non-appearance. Joan Sutherland was hospitalized after breaking both legs in a fall.

 

Joan Francesc Marco was named the new managing director of Spain’s historic Gran Teatre del Liceu; Michel Franck the next general director of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées; Andreas Homok director of Zürich Opera; and David McLoughlin the new full-time CEO of Wexford Festival, which was anticipating its Fall 2008 move into its new opera house.

 

Yuri Temirkanov became music director of Teatro Regio di Parma; Axel Kober signed as the new general music director of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein; Welsh National Opera named Lothar Koenigs as its new music director from August 2009, Mannheim Opera House appointed Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger as new music director. Riccardo Chailly quit as chief conductor of the Leipzig Opera.

 

The Wiener Staatsoper, most of whose orchestra members comprise the Vienna Philharmonic, risked heart failure among older members by appointing a woman, Albena Danailova, as its concertmaster.

 

Opera Australia was accused of falling into “an abyss of mediocrity” by two Australian singers who spoke of declining standards and morale at the company since Richard Hickox started as music director.

 

With Gian Carlo Menotti removed by death and his adopted son Francis by political maneuvering, the way was deemed clear for a reconciliation between the two Spoleto Festivals. The two are due to reunite in 2009.

 

After a wait of some 120 years, Norway opened a $840 million national opera house in April.

 

Thirty-five years after its opening, Sydney Opera House was still sparking arguments, with a plan to spend $700 million on improvements. Some locals felt that while it would be good to have an opera house that sounded like an opera house, building a new one would be cheaper.

 

In Germany, a new $382 million concert hall in Hamburg looked set to cost $32 million more than anticipated. The project was intended “to give Hamburg a world-famous landmark like Sydney’s Opera House,” a link which the city fathers may wish to rethink.

 

The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama came under fire when financial restraints prompted threats of cuts. Head of music James Gourlay left after just two years in the job.

 

London’s historic church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields reopened after a $144 million renovation.

 

In Buenos Aires, the restoration of the city’s historic Teatro Colón was two years behind schedule. Local boy Daniel Barenboim, touring his Staatskapelle Berlin in a stadium that usually hosts rock concerts and boxing events, called on those “responsible and irresponsible” to get on with it.

 

Twelve-year-old trombonist Peter Moore became the youngest player to become BBC Young Musician of Year in the competition’s 30-year history.

 

The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards presented an honorary membership to José Antonio Abreu, founder of the Simon Boliver Youth Orchestra and El Sistema. His protégé Gustavo Dudamel picked up the Young Artists Award. The Radio 3 Listeners’ Award—the only award voted for not by a jury but by radio listeners—was won by Christine Brewer.

 

The BBC Music Magazine Awards are nominated by the magazine’s reviewers and voted upon by readers. Disc of the Year went to Mitsuko Uchida for a recording of Beethoven piano sonatas.

 

The lowest-common-denominator extravaganza of the Classical Brits chose Andrew Lloyd Webber for “Outstanding Achievement in Music.”

 

Sir Colin Davis received a gift-wrapped 80th-birthday present in the form of James MacMillan’s full-scale St. John Passion, with help from the Ronald A. Wilford Foundation for Conductors and the Eduard van Beinum Foundation. He conducted its premiere in April at London’s Barbican Centre.

 

Also in April came the opening at Covent Garden of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s latest opera, The Minotaur. A dark tale of the half man, half bull, who rapes, slaughters, and devours a regular delivery of youngsters, it was red in tooth and claw, both onstage and in the pit.

 

Luigi Nono’s monumental Prometeo, which took almost a quarter of a century to get to Britain (it still awaits a U.S. premiere), filled the refurbished Royal Festival Hall in May, forming the culmination of the Southbank Centre’s festival “Luigi Nono: Fragments of Venice.”

 

Ondrej Macek, a 36-year old harpsichordist and conductor, managed to get Vivaldi into the premiere listings with the first modern performance of Argippo, a work first performed 278 years ago but which was lost until Macek stumbled across an anonymous score.

 

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