I take your gold and now I give it away


Back links to my post Are top musicians sharing the financial pain? continue to prompt hate mail from within the music industry. Elsewhere it is reported that Valery Gergiev has been ‘defrauded by aides’ of more than $8 million. Not a single soul has remarked on the irony of how in these financially challenged times a conductor can amass that amount of money in the first place.

My headline is sung by Brünnhilde in the last act of Götterdämmerung and the header image is remixed from Wieland Wagner’s 1966 Bayreuth production of Das Rheingold. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). This post is also available via Facebook and Twitter. V1.1

Comments

Philip Amos said…
I think it's a bit worse than that. Gergiev is very good at taking care of his own interests, so if aides could nick $8 million without his noticing pronto, methinks his net worth is a damn sight more! Add together his basic salaries from his various posts, recording royalties, guest appearances, investments of all this...$50 million? $100 million?
11:19 pm
Unknown said…
Is that really an image from Siegfried? Looks more like Rhinegold, given the array of characters shown - which is all the more appropriate for this post.
12:03 am
Pliable said…
Unknown, you are quite correct and that was my error - now corrected, thanks.

The provenance of that Rheingold production shot may interest some readers. It was scanned in from the libretto of the original Philips LP release of Karl Böhm's live Bayreuth Ring recorded in 1966/7.
10:30 am
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