Soprano Jane Eaglen now resident in Cleveland
Don Rosenberg recently interviewed well-known British dramatic soprano Jane Eaglen, who is now teaching at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory. She has sung in all the greatest opera houses of the world, and for a number of years has been a resident of Seattle and taught at the University of Washington. (She also sang the role of Brünhilde in Siegfried, the Christoph von Dohnanyi’s and Cleveland Orchestra’s unfinished Ring cycle.) According to the article, she became “dissatisfied” with the UW music school and started looking around. And now here she is. As a large woman, she also admits that she is a victim of the current trend of opera production where the singers are preferred to be physically similar in size to the characters they are portraying on stage.
Seattle’s loss is Cleveland’s gain.
WCPN reports on Rosenberg verdict
On Friday, August 6, WCPN, the Cleveland NPR affiliate, broadcast a story (a transcript and link to the audio are here) about Donald Rosenberg’s losing lawsuit against the Plain Dealer and the Musical Arts Association. No new information, but a note from a Case Western Reserve University law school faculty member pointing out that the First Amendment protects journalists from government intrusion; the Rosenberg/PD/MAA case was a purely private matter, so the First Amendment did not apply.
Jury finds against Rosenberg
In a not unsurprising conclusion given recent testimony in the case, on Friday a jury in Cleveland found that the Cleveland Plain Dealer had not discriminated against critic Donald Rosenberg by reassigning him away from reviewing the Cleveland Orchestra’s concerts, nor had the Musical Arts Association, the parent organization of the Cleveland Orchestra, defamed him by making complaints to the newspaper’s management about the alleged personal vendetta Rosenberg had (has?) against the orchestra’s music director Franz Welser-Möst. The Plain Dealer does not yet have its own reporting on the end of the four week trial (just an Associated Press report.) But the New York Times has a more extensive article, which quotes Rosenberg as saying,“We gave it our best shot. I stood up for what I believed. I don’t regret a moment of it.” Rosenberg declined to comment on any future plans he may have, although his attorney was making noises of a potential appeal. The Orchestra had no comment.
VFB will update this report with a PD link as it is available.
Judge Sutula to Don Rosenberg: PD didn’t retaliate
Donald Rosenberg
Franz Welser-Möst
In one of the more bizarre twists of the lawsuit by Plain Dealer critic Donald Rosenberg against the newspaper and the Musical Arts Association, reported here, Common Pleas Judge John D. Sutula ruled that
reporter Don Rosenberg’s assertion that the newspaper had retaliated against him for filing a suit against the Cleveland Orchestra and the Plain Dealer should not go before a jury because there were “no material facts to dispute.”
He said that that Rosenberg’s attorney had not shown that there was any adverse effect by the editorial instruction that Rosenberg was not to use the words “Cleveland Orchestra” in his writings for the newspaper. The newspaper’s attorney, David Posner, said, “He was told ‘the reason you can’t refer to the Cleveland Orchestra is that you sued the Cleveland Orchestra.’”
The PD reported that on Monday, August 2, that the newspaper had rested its case in its defense. The newspaper’s editors all testified that Rosenberg’s age (remember that his suit is partially one of age discrimination) never came up in discussions of his reassignment. All were in agreement that the reassignment was a journalistic matter, not one of musical expertise, due to the widely held perception that Rosenberg held a personal vendetta against Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst.
On Tuesday it is expected that the attorneys for Rosenberg, the Plain Dealer and the Musical Arts Association will make closing arguments before the case is turned over to the jury.
Rosenberg’s lawyers rest their case; defense begins
In the ongoing saga of Cleveland Plain Dealer music critic Donald Rosenberg’s discrimination lawsuit against the paper and the Cleveland Orchestra, during this week the plaintiff’s lawyers rested their case, and the defense began its case. The Plain Dealer reported on Rosenberg’s testimony. Among other tidbits, Rosenberg testified that he thought that Music Director Franz Welser-Möst would eventually have to be replaced. Also:
Rosenberg also agreed, again under questioning by [David] Posner [the Musical Arts Association attorney], that others — including newspaper readers, members of the orchestra and others in the community — had complained about what was perceived as a pervasive negative tenor to his reviews of Welser-Most.
When questioned by his own attorney, however, he testified that he believed [Plain Dealer Editor Susan] Goldberg had responded only to pressures from the Musical Arts Association — not other factors — when she reassigned him.
On Thursday this week the Orchestra began its defense, with expert testimony from a journalism faculty from University of California, Berkeley, specializing in ethics who found that Rosenberg’s reviews had taken a mindset of bias, from being too close to the orchestra that Rosenberg loved.
There was also testimony by Orchestra Executive Director Gary Hanson about the unflattering article that Rosenberg had written about Weser-Möst in 2004, quoting from an interview the conductor had given to a German language magazine without asking the conductor for comment. The orchestra’s expert stated that Rosenberg was at fault for not seeking comment.
The trial continues next week, with the newspaper presenting its defense. The jury is expected to get the case toward the end of next week.
Franz Welser-Möst testifies by video in Rosenberg lawsuit trial
In its ongoing coverage of the lawsuit by Plain Dealer critic Donald Rosenberg against the PD and the Cleveland Orchestra, the paper reports that current Music Director Franz Welser-Möst testified by means of a video deposition taken in 2009, to the effect that he was angered by Rosenberg’s alleged mis-characterization in a 2004 PD article of an interview that Franz gave to a Swiss magazine, in which the conductor referred to Cleveland’s “blue haired ladies” and to Cleveland as an “inflated farmer’s village.” In his deposition, Welser-Möst says that he intended the latter comment in a complimentary way, and that Rosenberg took his comments out of context, mistranslating them out of German to English, publishing a very unflattering article about Welser-Möst without asking the conductor to comment on his statements.
Rosenberg’s attorney Steven Sindell has apparently not yet called any witnesses or introduced any direct evidence to support the claim of Rosenberg’s lawsuit, that he was discriminated against on the basis of age.
Rosenberg/Cleveland Orchestra/Plain Dealer case goes to trial
The Cleveland Plain Dealer blog today has details of the opening day of Plain Dealer music critic Donald Rosenberg’s lawsuit against the Plain Dealer and the Musical Arts Association, the parent organization of the Cleveland Orchestra. In the suit Rosenberg alleges a number of supposed misdeeds on the part of his employer, including age discrimination, and that the officials of the Orchestra pressured the Plain Dealer management into removing him from his long time assignment of reviewing Cleveland Orchestra concerts because he reviewed concerts conducted by music director Franz Welser-Möst in a highly unflattering matter.
The summary in today’s blog post rehashes what has been stated before, but sets things up for some potentially juicy testimony during the jury trial. Stay tuned.
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