Misha Vitenson, first violinist in the Amernet String Quartet at Northern Kentucky University, returned to his home in Israel last month to renew his work visa - and became stuck there indefinitely, when the American Embassy slowed operations because of the Iraq war.
Most of the embassy staff left the country, and Vitenson's interview was canceled.
"They were so backed up, I was not given a new date," Vitenson says. "I said, that's it. I'm here for another month. Clearly nothing was going to happen soon."
Meanwhile, work was piling up at NKU, where Vitenson is artist-in-residence, and he missed the quartet's scheduled March 30 concert.
The Amernet's cellist, Javier Arias, mentioned the predicament to Racelle Weiman, director of the Center for Holocaust Education at Hebrew Union College.
"It so happens, my parents were American embassy employees for many years, and retired in Haifa, and are friends with the ambassador," Dr. Weiman says. She called her parents, who remembered a friend of 30 years who worked on the embassy switchboard. They called, the friend answered, and put them through directly to the Consul General.
"Basically, they moved my file from the bottom of the pile to the top," Vitenson says. When he got the call on April 1 that his visa would be renewed, he was afraid it was an April Fool's joke.
"It was an experience," says Vitenson, who is back in town.
The Amernet Quartet's rescheduled concert is at 8 p.m. May 6 in Greaves Hall. The program is Haydn's Quartet in D major, Op. 64, No. 5, "The Lark," Bartok's Quartet No. 1 and Brahms' Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1. The concert is free. Information: (859) 572-6984; www.nku.edu/~music.
Farewells: Cincinnati Opera lost two stars from the past this season. Dino Yannopoulos, 83, who died on April 6 in Philadelphia, was director of the Cincinnati Summer Opera 1960-62. In 1960, he mounted the company's only production of Britten's Peter Grimes - "one of the finest productions we had," recalls opera historian Charlotte Shockley.
The next season, the company posted a huge deficit, and, amid threats of suits and counter-suits, Mr. Yannopoulos resigned. His career spanned a half-century, and he was principal director of the Metropolitan Opera 1945-77.
In August, Anton Guadagno, a popular conductor at Cincinnati Opera over two decades (1963-82), died of a heart attack at age 79, one day after conducting Verdi's Otello in St. Margarethen, Austria. He was known here for his affinity for the Italian repertoire.
Voigt in Dayton: Dayton Opera subscription sales are booming, partly thanks to the company's new home in the Benjamin & Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center. Next year's season should turn more heads, when the company presents its second Opera Star Gala with the stunning dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt (Musical America's 2003 vocalist of the year), April 20 and 22, 2004.
The three-production season will open with Puccini's La Boheme (Nov. 1, 7 and 9) in a production designed by John Conklin for San Diego Opera. Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance visits for five performances Jan. 16-21. The season concludes with Verdi's Rigoletto, Feb. 28, March 5 and 7.
Opera mezzo Denyce Graves performs the company's first gala next month, May 2 and 4.
Tickets, subscriptions and information: (937) 228-3630; (888) 228-3630; www.daytonopera.org.
True artistry: Barry Green, former principal bass of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and author of The Inner Game of Music (Doubleday; $23.95), is coming back to town to sign his new book, The Mastery of Music, Ten Pathways to True Artistry (Broadway Books; $24.95), 1 p.m. next Sunday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Norwood. In his new book, Green - who lives in California - explores how musicians make the step from playing the notes to communicating the music.
Through interviews with major stars such as violinist Joshua Bell, jazz great Dave Brubeck, opera singer Frederica von Stade and composer Libby Larsen, as well as many symphony musicians, Green gets in touch with the magical side of music-making, which has little to do with technique. Some of his most humorous anecdotes involve CSO members and former conductors. Information: www.themasteryofmusic.com.
Marketing the opera: If you get the Sunday New York Times, you might have noticed Cincinnati Opera's season brochure insert, with images by Mary GrandPre (the Harry Potter illustrator). About 7,000 brochures were placed in Greater Cincinnati editions, part of the opera's new campaign to target Cincinnati subscribers as well as opera tourists, says Cincinnati Opera's Julie Maslov.
The back of the brochure touts a "romance package" at the Hilton Netherland Plaza. The company has been gradually stepping up its tourism campaign: Last year, visitors from 34 states and overseas attended a Cincinnati Opera performance. The endeavor is getting noticed. Marketing efforts and artistic achievements under director Nicholas Muni are summarized in "Postcard from Cincinnati," an article by Paul Cutts in this month's Opera Now, an United Kingdom-based international opera magazine.
The brochure only lists subscription performance dates for the four-opera season (June 19-July 19). Brochures including single ticket performances for Turandot (June 27) and La Traviata (July 18) will come out in mid-May. Single tickets go on sale June 2. Information: 241-2742; www.cincinnatiopera.com.
First woman CEO: Deborah C. Card, executive director of the Seattle Symphony, is the new president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Henry Fogel. She is the first woman CEO in the orchestra's 112-year history, the Chicago Tribune reports. Card, 46, is one of just three women running major American orchestras (the others are in Atlanta and Los Angeles), and the most prominent woman heading a major orchestra in the world.
In Seattle, Card is credited with turning around a poorly managed orchestra by eliminating deficits, balancing budgets, and increasing the orchestra's endowment. She raised operating revenues by 100 percent, and oversaw the construction of Seattle's $159 million Benaroya Hall.
AAAE and WCET-TV: The Association for the Advancement of Arts in Education (AAAE) has merged with WCET Channel 48. The arts education nonprofit organization was founded in 1995 with a $1 million grant from the Corbett Foundation. Its staff works with K-12 teachers on integrating the arts into classroom instruction.
That program, "Arts Connections," and the partnership with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, "Sound Discoveries," will continue, says Lauren Hess, arts projects manager. She says that WCET's technology should bring them to a new level.
And the winners are: Soprano Siri Vik, a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, won the first prize of $7,500 in the Lotte Lenya Competition sponsored by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, March 22 at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N.Y. She was one of 15 finalists out of 100 contestants. Vik and the other four winners will perform in concert at New York's Lincoln Center on May 15.
Male soprano Michael Maniaci, 26, who graduated from CCM in 1999, has won a ARIA award, one of three singers to win a $15,000 prize.
Maniaci was also one of four winners in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, held in New York on April 6. He and soprano Christina Pier, 28, Tristate Regional winner in the Metropolitan Opera Regional Auditions held at CCM in December, each received a prize of $15,000, along with opportunities for career advancement.
Pier is a graduate student at Indiana University.
The Metropolitan Opera National Council Audition concert will be broadcast at 7:30 p.m. June 29 on WGUC-FM (90.9).
Pianist Dmitri Shelest, a junior at Northern Kentucky University, won first prize in the Ohio Music Teachers Association/Graves Piano & Organ Co. contest in Columbus on March 2.
E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com
