Around The Classical Internet: April 15, 2011

This week in classical news:

• Could it be that one of America's traditional Big Five orchestras is going to declare bankruptcy? Alas, the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra might vote yes as soon as tomorrow.
• Yet more bad news at New York City Opera: Their chorus and production personnel might go on strike at the end of this month.
• Speaking of walkouts: the Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike is now officially over, after the players approved a new contract.
• Think labor relations at American orchestras have gotten acrimonious? Well, check out Rio de Janeiro, after half the musicians in the Brazil Symphony Orchestra were sacked.
• The Honolulu Symphony Orchestra rises again?
• Mexican-born composer Daniel Catan passed away suddenly this past weekend at age 62.
• BBC Music Magazine gave out its annual awards, and the top spot went to hometown band the London Symphony Orchestra.
• In the Guardian, however, Tom Service wonders if the LSO's success has created too much of a good thing.
• The Recording Academy's Neil Portnow, speaking about the Grammy cuts: "We may have done some things we want to rethink in a year."
• The Los Angeles Philharmonic's newest commission: an opera.
• According to the Los Angeles Times, cellist Alisa Weilerstein is a double agent. (Well, not really.)
• Forget playing music for your plants — how about buying organic milk from cows treated to a live concert?
• Cellist Alban Gerhardt plays for another really captive audience: newborn infants.
• Opera nerds, rejoice: #operaplot returned this week for a third installment. The competition requires summarizing opera stories via twitter. Two favorites: "I'm like, so over this baby daddy drama — this Easter Sunday imma go tell yo' mama" (@tracycox on Cavalleria Rusticana); "Friday, Friday, gotta get healed on Friday, everybody's lookin' forward to re-demp-tion. Holy grail holy grail (yeah)." (Parsifal, as told by @primalamusica)
• But as Alex Ross points out, Nietzsche was the prescient master of #operaplot.

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