Enlarge Yoshikazo Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb in Tokyo in May 2011.

Yoshikazo Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb in Tokyo in May 2011.

• Hey, did you hear about what went down between the Metropolitan Opera and Opera News this week?
• Speaking of bizarre exchanges, remember that Russian-born principal cellist from the Beijing Symphony Orchestra who got into it with a random female passenger on a Chinese train last week? He's been fired, according to a statement published (in Chinese) on the orchestra's website. Shanghaiist has a translation of artistic director Tan Lihua's comments: "The Beijing Symphony Orchestra is an ambassador of advanced culture. All employees, including foreign musicians, need to abide by the laws of the land, traditional moral codes, as well as the orchestra's rules and regulations. Employees should behave in a civilized fashion both on-stage and off-, maintain the manners expected of artists, and consciously safeguard the image and reputation of the Orchestra. We will take additional management precautions to prevent similar incidents from happening again in the future."
• Here's a feature from the Wall Street Journal about the rise of the new, post-Communist generation of Czech artists, from the Pavel Haas Quartet to mezzo Magdalena Kožená — and how many of them are not necessarily interested in specializing in the music of their homeland. "And Ms. Kožená — who admits that she is more interested these days in Monteverdi than Zelenka — says that a few solid decades of foreign travel have made Czech musicians perhaps a bit less Czech. 'When everything is open,' she says, 'the repertory can become much broader.'"
• This weekend, you can catch the season premiere of HBO's nine-part documentary series YoungArts Masterclass — the first installment features Renée Fleming and four young students at The Juilliard School, whom she puts through their paces by doing things like singing with a pencil between their teeth. (Fun fact: one of the four, Samantha Hankey, went to my high school, the Walnut Hill School for the Arts.)
• Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, announced yesterday that he will step down from his post at the end of the orchestra's 2013-14 season. He got the job in 1980, when he was 31. Now 63, Dicterow plans to teach at USC's Thornton School of Music and continue his career as a soloist and chamber musician.
• Rob Deemer has a good piece on NewMusicBox right now about how little most composers coming out of school know about taking charge of their own careers: "Most composition programs are built along the business model of South Park's underpants gnomes [collect underpants + ? = profit]."
• The Philadelphia Orchestra filed its plan for exiting bankruptcy late Wednesday night. As long as the symphony's creditors have no objection and the presiding judge approves the plan, the orchestra expects to be out of bankruptcy by July 31. However, as the board's chairman, Richard B. Worley, observed: "We still have an awful lot of work to do: rebuilding our audience, rebuilding excitement in the community about the Philadelphia Orchestra ... You can't run a major orchestra with 155,000 attendees [annually], with the level of contributions that we've had and the level of endowment we've had."
• David Zinman had a lightbulb moment with his 16-year-old son that resulted in the "Tonhalle Late" concerts in Zurich, which start at 10 PM and are followed by dance parties that go until 4 AM. Zinman asked his son, who loved classical music, why he didn't go to concerts. The son replied, "But none of my friends go to concerts." Why not? "Because," said the son, "they don't want to be seen with their parents."

Enlarge Pablo Helguera

Pablo Helguera

Got an idea for a classical cartoon, or a reaction to this one? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and performance. You can see more of his work at Artworld Salon and on his own site.

Enlarge Kobal Collection/Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox

Test your knowledge of movies and music.

Kobal Collection/Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox

Test your knowledge of movies and music.

It's a special week for movie buffs. The swanky and influential Cannes film festival is under way in the South of France. And tomorrow marks a crucial day for fans of Chewbacca, R2-D2 and Luke Skywalker.

Thirty-five years ago, from a fictional galaxy far, far away, a rogues' gallery of characters first invaded our imaginations. Director George Lucas unleashed the first Star Wars movie, launching what would become an icon of pop culture.

A key element of the Star Wars juggernaut is its music, written by John Williams. The main theme was so popular (yes, you're humming it to yourself right now) it was parodied by Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live.

In honor of music's meaningful contributions to film, here's a very subjective little movie music puzzler. Listen to each music clip, then drag it to the image from the corresponding film. Unlike Williams' work, these aren't pieces composed as film scores. Instead, they represent six clever choices of classical compositions deployed imaginatively in movies. Good luck, and may the Force be with you.

Enlarge Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Peter Gelb speaks at an event in New York City in April 2012.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Peter Gelb speaks at an event in New York City in April 2012.

Yesterday, the opera world was jolted by a rapid-fire sequence of stunning turns at the Metropolitan Opera — and not by divas onstage. In the morning, the New York Times carried a front-page story by Daniel J. Wakin in which he reported that Opera News, the magazine published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, would no longer review any productions at the Met, "a policy prompted by the Met's dissatisfaction over negative critiques." (A very harsh review of the company's new Götterdämmerung had appeared in the April Opera News, followed the next month by a damning Brian Kellow column about the tenure of Met general manager Peter Gelb.)

By 4 p.m. ET, however, the Met, not the Guild or its magazine, had issued a press statement reversing course. By close of business, Gelb had given a second interview to the Times: "I think I made a mistake," Gelb told Wakin.

The Opera News tussles came not long after two other incidents involving the Met and the media. In August, the Met asked fan Bradley Wilber, the amateur blogger behind the site "Met Futures" — which listed with impressive accuracy the Met's repertoire, casts and conductors several years ahead of their public announcements — to stop publishing, and Wilber did so immediately. Earlier this month, NPR member station WQXR, which receives some sponsorship from the Met and broadcasts the live Met performances on Saturday afternoons, deleted a blog post by Olivia Giovetti that criticized the Met's ambitious and very expensive new production of Wagner's Ring cycle, after Gelb personally complained to WQXR's parent organization, New York Public Radio. (Laura Walker, New York Public Radio's president and CEO, told the Times that the post "wasn't up to [WQXR's] high standards" and that it was already under review by the time she heard from Gelb.)

What seems to have precipitated this reversal in less than a day was an immediate and loud outcry from fans and critics. The Times was deluged by reader comments, along with hundreds more posted on the often biting opera blog Parterre, which also posted an essay comparing Gelb to Vladimir Putin, written by an anonymous contributor who chose the nom de plume "Lenny Abramov" for the occasion.

Across the country and around the world, noted critics also leapt to comment under their own names — and many of them didn't mince words. Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, wrote in a post that Gelb has "castrated the magazine ... he has guaranteed that nothing published in Opera News about the Met, be it positive or negative, will henceforth be taken at face value, and that no reputable music journalist will ever again agree to appear in its pages."

In her Washington Post blog, Anne Midgette wrote: "The takeaway now seems to me to be that Gelb is losing his mind," adding, "it seems surprising that an experienced marketer like Gelb, however sensitive he may be to writing he finds off-message, would opt to attack a field that's already beleaguered, that of arts journalism, and actively work to hobble one of the few organs in the world devoted to writing seriously about his company's own art form." Alex Ross of The New Yorker followed along a similar path: "Even those who have defended Gelb's artistic choices at the Met — I am not one of them — must have wondered at the bizarre sequence of events that unfolded yesterday: It appeared that America's leading opera company was cracking up in public."

Enlarge Edmond Morin/Naive Records

A portrait of French composer Félicien-César David (from 1876), celebrating his famous orchestral ode Le Désert.

Edmond Morin/Naive Records

A portrait of French composer Félicien-César David (from 1876), celebrating his famous orchestral ode Le Désert.

Orphaned at age five from a musical family, French composer Félicien-César David had a religious upbringing, and would go to study at the Paris Conservatory in 1830. But he left after eighteen months, later making his way to Egypt, where music of the East would make a lasting impression on him.

David wrote a significant body of work, including a highly acclaimed and innovative symphonic ode Le Désert in 1844. It established him as the first French romantic orientalist and gained him a reputation throughout the continent.

Chamber music figures significantly in his output, but curiously enough the influence here is European rather than Eastern. This is quite apparent in the three of his four string quartets included on this new album, which bear a few similarities to those of George Onslow, a French composer from a generation earlier.

Enlarge Barron Claiborne/courtesy of the artist

Composer Philip Glass.

Barron Claiborne/courtesy of the artist

Composer Philip Glass.

Ever dream of participating in a world premiere of music by one of the world's most widely beloved and celebrated composers? Here's your big chance.

To honor Philip Glass' 75th birthday this year, we here at NPR Music commissioned Glass to create a short work that would be great fun for amateur and professional singers alike. We're inviting the public to take part in this event on June 21, which will take place at one of the world's most iconic locations: Times Square. We'll be videotaping and recording the performance, so even if you can't be in New York that day, you can still experience this premiere.

We're joining forces with a festival that has in short order become a highlight of summer: Make Music New York, which presents hundreds of free, outdoor concerts across the city right on the summer solstice, June 21.

Glass's short piece is called The New Rule and features text by the medieval Sufi poet Rumi translated by Coleman Barks. The work for eight-part mixed chorus is adapted from the composer's 1997 3-D "digital opera" Monsters of Grace. Conductor Kent Tritle, one of America's leading choral conductors, will lead the singers in the Glass and movements from Bach's B Minor Mass; you can access the Bach parts at Make Music New York.

To participate, just download the score of The New Rule.

'The New Rule'--Click the image to access a PDF

Enlarge NPR

NPR

Let us know you're coming (although a reservation is not required to attend) and learn the music in the coming weeks.

On Thursday, June 21 at 6:30 p.m. ET, meet us in Father Duffy Square (the northern triangle of Times Square on Broadway between West 45th and 47th Streets). Arrive warmed up and ready to sing — and we hope to see and hear you there!

Enlarge Erich Auerbach/Getty Images

Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore in an undated recital rehearsal.

Erich Auerbach/Getty Images

Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore in an undated recital rehearsal.

• This week has ended on a very sad note with the passing of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who died earlier today in Bavaria at age 86.
• Anne Midgette has a remembrance of her friend and co-writer Herbert Breslin, who managed Luciano Pavarotti's career for more than 35 years and who died yesterday in Nice. He was "a man who routinely screamed expletives into the telephone before slamming it down, cut various financial corners, and made gleeful use of his star client's fame to manipulate journalists and other artists ... But there was a lot more to Herbert's story than that."
• And yesterday, the French pianist France Clidat died at age 79. She won the Liszt Prize in Budapest in 1956. (link in French)
• Der Spiegel has the story behind Dietmar Machold, the "Stradivarius man" going on trial this summer in Vienna for embezzlement, bankruptcy fraud and grand commercial fraud, with criminal complaints also coming from the U.S., Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Prosecutors' efforts "have pieced together a picture of a businessman who was probably cash-strapped for years and sold violins he had taken in commission for millions — often failing to pass on the proceeds to the instruments' owners or to banks, allegedly using the money to pay off other debts instead."
• Remember that planned partnership between Kid Rock and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra? Well, it happened: "There was a lot of entertainment, energy and even a few moments of enlightenment."
• The Sacramento Philharmonic has raised enough cash to sustain itself through at least one more season.
• Speaking of cash, the Wall Street Journal has a look at the New York City Opera's current financial standing: "City Opera scheduled only four performances of Orpheus, which seriously limits its income-producing potential. Indeed, this season, only 8% of the company's $15.3 million budget was met through ticket sales. ... By contrast, the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., has less than half City Opera's budget, does 40-plus performances of four operas in a 900-seat theater, and last year earned about 34% of its budget in ticket income (42% in earned income when you add in rentals, T-shirts, and the like)."
• After the first year of partnering with Carnegie Hall in the "Achievement Program" teaching standards program, the Toronto Conservatory has doubled its enrollment. (Famous alums: Glenn Gould, Jon Vickers, Diana Krall.)
• Have you heard about the hot young Venezuelan conductor who's come out of El Sistema? No, it's not Dudamel (for once) — it's 32-year-old Rafael Payare, who has just won the very prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen.
• I don't speak Mandarin, but this fight between the (Russian) Oleg Vedernikov, the principal cellist of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, and a random female passenger on a Shenyang-Beijing train is kind of bananas. Vedernikov has apologized, but in the meantime he's been suspended from the symphony and is awaiting further disciplinary action from his employer.
• Here's a completely subjective list of the 10 most musical American presidents. (Me, I would have picked Thomas Jefferson over Warren Harding.) Interesting tidbits gleaned: Jefferson practiced three hours a day! Chester Arthur played the banjo!
• And the snarky and yet widely beloved (actually, probably in part widely beloved due to the snark) blog "Proper Discord" blog is back at long last. The not-so anonymous author has revealed himself to be Andy Doe, the former classical buyer for iTunes and until recently the COO of Naxos.
• Van-tiques Road Show Results. Last week we mentioned that more than 150 items belonging to piano icon Van Cliburn were up for grabs May 17 at Christie's auction house. The event was a success, bringing in $4.3 million. The top lot of the sale was a pair of George II Giltwood Mirrors, attributed to Matthias Lock, dating from around 1570. The final price was $464,500.

Enlarge Pablo Helguera

Pablo Helguera

Got an idea for a classical cartoon, or a reaction to this one? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and performance. You can see more of his work at Artworld Salon and on his own site.

Enlarge Erich Auerbach/Getty Images

A portrait of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau taken circa 1965.

Erich Auerbach/Getty Images

A portrait of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau taken circa 1965.

Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau — often cited as one of the greatest and most influential singers of the 20th century — died near Starnberg, Germany this morning at age 86. His wife, soprano Julia Varady, announced his death from undisclosed causes.

Fischer-Dieskau's lyricism and sensitivity to the words he was singing made him unmatched among song interpreters. His repertoire was said to include more than 3,000 songs by composers including Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Mahler and Wolf, and he made hundreds of recordings over the course of his 50-year career. When he made his American debut in 1955 (singing Schubert's Winterreise), the New York Times cheered, "The performance left no doubt that last night's listeners were in the presence of a singing artist." In Richard Wigmore's 2007 biography Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: The Baritone of Our Age, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf hailed her frequent colleague as "a born god who has it all."

Reached this morning by phone, Tim Page, professor of music and journalism at USC, said, "What makes Fischer-Dieskau such a significant artist, especially when it comes to lieder, is just the way he throws himself completely into the music. You have the sense that he's examined it from every possible angle and he's chosen this way to go with it. The shading and the sensitivity with which he works with words, not only their meaning but the way he caresses their phonemes, is quite remarkable."

Fischer-Dieskau was also widely respected on the opera stage, with roles that ranged from the Count in Mozart's Nozze di Figaro to the title roles of Verdi's Rigoletto and Paul Hindemith's Cardillac. After his retirement from the stage in 1992, he continued to be a vigorous presence in master classes.

The baritone was born May 28, 1925 in Berlin. By his own figuring, he tried to start singing somewhere around age 2. His mother supported his fascination by taking him to concerts even when he was barely school-aged. By the time he was a teenager, he was already becoming a force to be reckoned with.

He first sang Winterreise in public at age 17, in 1943. He was singing at the town hall of Zehlendorf, a suburb of Berlin. The performance was interrupted by an RAF bombing. In an interview he gave to The Guardian upon turning 80, the singer recalled, "The whole audience of 200 people and myself had to go into the cellar for two-and-a-half hours. Then when the raid was over we came back up and resumed."

One of his most frequent collaborators, the pianist Gerald Moore, wrote in his memoirs: "He had only sung one phrase before I knew I was in the presence of a master." (At the time, Moore was 52 years old, while Fischer-Dieskau was just half the pianist's age.) As time went on, the admiration only increased for this musician's musician: Fischer-Dieskau partnered with such pianistic legends as Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Horowitz, Daniel Barenboim and Alfred Brendel.

The baritone's very first recording, of Brahms' Four Serious Songs, was made in 1949. Within two years, he was giving his first concert in London and made his first recording with Gerald Moore — the first of no less than three recorded traversals of Schubert's Die Schoene Muellerin with Moore, along with other recordings of the same cycle with Alfred Brendel and other pianists.

The Second World War defined a large part of the singer's youth. Conscripted into the German army, he was captured in Italy by the Americans in 1945 and spent almost two years as a POW; while there, he gave recitals of Schubert songs. Once the Nazis were defeated, Fischer-Dieskau returned to Berlin and began singing professionally.

In a gesture suffused with symbolism, it was Fischer-Dieskau whom English composer and conductor Benjamin Britten requested to sing in the premiere of Britten's War Requiem in 1962 at the shattered and then rebuilt Coventry Cathedral. Britten's choice of wording speaks volumes about Fischer-Dieskau's immense reputation among fellow artists: "With great temerity," Britten wrote in his letter, "I am asking you whether you would sing the baritone."