Sydney’s great symbol continues to challenge those charged with making it sound as good as it looks. Jörn Utzon’s original plan was never fully realized, and the current plan for a makeover could cost as much as A$700 million (£320 million). Now the architect Ken Woolley has proposed that the complex solve its problems without remaking either the opera theatre or concert hall: he has mooted a 1,800-seat opera theatre next to the present Opera House, partly over the harbour and partly over the botanic gardens. His price tag is A$400 million. He told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Some critics will feel it compromises Utzon’s original vision, while others say it just will not work … Only the brave would dare build something near the sacred monument.’

Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón, closed since 2006 for renovation, had been scheduled to reopen this year with an Aida marking the theatre’s centenary. The authorities have now disclosed that it will remain shut until at least 2010.

Meanwhile, the reopening of Moscow’s Bolshoy Theatre, closed three years ago for ‘emergency repairs’, has been rescheduled for November 2009 after more than 75 per cent of the building was found to be unstable.

The Metropolitan Opera has formed a partnership with the Juilliard School on a joint training programme for young singers and accompanists. The newly named Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in partnership with the Juilliard School will have the Met’s James Levine as its Artistic Director and Brian Zeger, head of Juilliard Vocal Arts, as its Executive Director. The programme will commence in 2010-11.

March 8 saw the first orchestral concert featuring Wagner’s music in the Arabian Gulf. Given by the Dresden Staatskapelle under the baton of Fabio Luisi, the concert in the Grand Auditorium of the Emirates Palace Hotel featured overtures or preludes to Rienzi, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Die Meistersinger and the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. The event, part of the eighth Al Ain Classical Music Festival, was the result of an invitation extended by the recently formed Richard Wagner Society in Abu Dhabi. The 1,200-strong audience included the country’s foreign minister and 300 members of Wagner societies in France and Germany.

• Joseph Volpe, former General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, has joined Theatre Projects Consultants, a leading theatre-design firm based in Connecticut, as Director of Strategic Development.
• Andrew Comben is the new Chief Executive of the Brighton Dome and Festival.
• Wolfgang Fink will become Intendant of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in September, succeeding Paul Müller, who takes on the same role at the Munich Philharmonic.
• Eliahu Inbal will become Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic from 2009-10.

• Dame Janet Baker is the latest recipient of the Incorporated Society of Musicians’ Distinguished Music Award.
• Dalia Schaechter has been made a Kölner Kammersängerin.
• The baritone Jeremy Huw Williams has won the classical music category of the 2008 Creative Wales Awards.
• Winners of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2008 National Council Auditions are the soprano Simone Osborne, mezzos Jennifer Johnson and Daveda Karanas, tenor René Barbera and baritone Edward Parks.
• The Borletti-Buitoni Trust has made the Austrian mezzo Daniela Lehner one of its award winners for 2008, and the British tenor Allan Clayton a fellowship winner.

• Margaret Atwood is writing the libretto for Christos Hatzis’s Pauline, to be premiered in Vancouver in 2010 with Judith Forst
• Daniel Barenboim will conduct Stefan Herheim’s new production of Lohengrin in Berlin next April, with Dorothea Röschmann, Burkhard Fritz and René Pape
• Plácido Domingo will sing Bajazet in Tamerlano at Covent Garden in 2010
• Michael Haneke will direct a new Così fan tutte for New York City Opera in 2012
• Charles Mackerras will conduct Covent Garden’s revival of The Cunning Little Vixen in 2010
• Franz Welser-Möst’s first production as Generalmusikdirektor of the Vienna Staatsoper will be Cardillac, in September 2010

• More Newsdesk stories and more of 'We hear that …' in the May 2008 issue of OPERA magazine.