Trouble in Philadelphia

Montreal is not alone seeing its orchestra being on the brink of a strike. The Philadelphia Orchestra, mired in stalled contract negotiations, averted a strike last night by extending the contract for 30 days, making possible the opening of its season tonight. Musicians had voted to authorize a strike, after their representatives walked out on contract talks Friday night. Management has asked for $1.8 million in cuts and new revenue from musicians in each year of a three-year contract, the musicians say they had offered a total of $5.36 million in savings and revenue generators, such as additional concerts. The last management offer was for a salary freeze at $2,000 per week in the first year, a raise to $2,035 in the second year, and an increase to $2,075 in the third year: a 3.75% raise over three years.

The orchestra's latest pay offer, the musicians say, was for a 1.5 percent total increase over four years. The minimum yearly salary is now $105,000 — second in the Big Five to Boston's $108,000, which is to rise to $113,000 in the final year. Those are minimum amounts, and many players get bonuses for seniority or for playing certain instrument. Principal players negotiate higher salaries. The principal negotiation hurdle has to do with pensions, the management seeking to replace the defined benefit plan, in which pensions typically amounting to $55,000 are guaranteed on retirement, with one in which the orchestra makes contributions for years of service.

Bel Canto Not to Be Heard

When we last checked with part-time Mill Valley resident Aaron Jay Kernis (last month, at the Cabrillo Music Festival), he spoke of his very young twins, and about working on commissions, including his first opera, on Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, to be completed for the 50th anniversary of Santa Fe Opera, in 2007. Last week, however, word came of "indefinite postponement, due to the composer's inability to complete" the work.

Cleve: Listens to Mozart, Conducts Bizet

When it comes to Mozart, Midsummer Mozart Festival founder-director and former San Jose Symphony music director George Cleve is usually on the podium, conducting. On Saturday, however, he was in the audience of Opera San Jose's production of The Marriage of Figaro, conducted by David Rohrbaugh. Cleve will return to San Jose next year to lead a run of Carmen performances February 5-20 (with a Viennese lilt?), and he says it will be the "right" version, with spoken dialogue.

Free Opera Double-Bill at Mills

Mills College will present an operatic double-bill, "Love and Death," consisting of Darius Milhaud's Les Malheurs d'Orphée and Gustav Holst's Savitri at 8 p.m., Saturday, October 30, in the Mills College Concert Hall. The operas will be directed by Paul Flight and Nalini Ghuman Gwynne. Admission is free. See www.mills.edu/music.

La Traviata from a 'Forced Perspective'

San Francisco Opera Chorus member Tom Reed has blogged his experience of working in the company's current production of La Traviata. He writes: "Dressed in sumptuous costumes, we pack the stage with elegant festivity. The opulent set employs `forced perspective,' which is to say that in order to make the set appear larger, it actually grows narrower as one moves upstage, creating the illusion of depth and space. Now as we know, the upstage area is the realm of the chorus, and I can confide that things do tend to get just a bit tight up there. Compressing 44 choristers, half of them in six-foot wide Gone-With-the-Wind hoopskirts, into an ever-narrowing space requires perhaps a wee bit more force than perspective. But we manage it . . ." To read Reed's report, go to www.tinyurl.com/6k4zs.

Ciao, Netrebko!

Young celebrity soprano Anna Netrebko — a Merola Program veteran, who made her US debut in San Francisco a decade ago, at age 22 — has canceled all her appearances in the US, including Los Angeles and Philadelphia, citing exhaustion.

Ever since she has entered into the tabloid world, including a Liz Smith story that "the sexy, raven-haired singer has a secret aspiration: to be a pole-dancing, G-string-wearing, 'make-men-drool-and-sweat' stripper for one night only," Netrebko has canceled long-standing engagements with great regularity. Besides a double postponement with San Francisco Performances, she failed to show up at the Verbier Festival and elsewhere in Europe, now canceling Philadelphia Don Pasquale appearances, having already dropped out of the Los Angeles Idomeneo. It will be interesting to see if she keeps her Metropolitan Boheme dates in November or returns to LA next February for Romeo et Juliette (with fellow-Merolini Rolando Villazon, currently featured in the San Francisco Traviata).

Just before the Philadelphia cancellation, Netrebko gave an interview to the Baltimore Sun, apparently involving "checkbook journalism" — "She is very conscious of the role that appearance plays in marketing classical music these days, and, as a standard practice, will agree to be photographed for an interview only if the requesting news outlet pays for a hair stylist and makeup technician."