"Anna Nicole Smith: The Opera" and other classical news of the weird

Now that 2008 has slipped over the horizon and all of the "Ten Best" lists have hit print, it's time once again for a list of the year's notable follies and foibles in the realm of music. A salute, and a crash of the timpani, to the following:

Not a great time to fall

Inline skating is terrific fun, but perhaps not when you've just been named the new first violinist of the fabled Juilliard String Quartet. Nicholas Eanet, 36, broke his left wrist while skating "in a euphoric state" after telling his good news to his former teacher. The break occurred in October; he's expected to get well by July 8, when the quartet plays Chicago's Ravinia Festival.

An even worse time to fall

Pity 26-year-old David Garrett, who fell down a flight of stairs after the end of a London concert and landed on his 290-year-old Stradivarius, the "San Lorenzo." The badly damaged instrument will cost more than $100,000 to repair — and it may never sound the same.

We hope this isn't part of the bailout

Ford launched a 2008 European advertising campaign featuring an orchestra whose members played 21 instruments made from parts of a Ford Focus, including a "clutch guitar" and a "window harp." Wonder whether the orchestra gets better mileage.

Dangerous bagpipes

Bagpiper Andrew Aitken faced arrest when he decided to play traditional Scottish tunes in Beijing on the day of the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. Chinese security forces reportedly thought the bagpipes were a bomb and moved to nab him until a tour guide explained the instrument was not usually lethal.

Dame Kiri attacks

Opera diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa had withering words for crossover celebrity singers who rise to stardom in the so-called "popera" vein: "They are all fake singers, they sing with a microphone." Singling out fellow New Zealander, the young Hayley Westenra, Dame Kiri sniffed: "She's not in my world. She has never been in it at all."

Heartless

Nearly every year, a long-dead major music personage gets exhumed in the interests of science. Last year it was Frederic Chopin, who died at 39 in 1849, reportedly of tuberculosis. Some researchers want to test Chopin's heart, to find out whether he really died of cystic fibrosis. The Polish government demurs. The heart, preserved in a jar of cognac, rests in a Warsaw church. (The rest of Chopin rests in Paris.)

The mouse that roared?

Last April, the New York Metropolitan Opera was cited by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene after a routine restaurant inspection at the Met, where the department found "evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or nonfood areas." You might want to bring your own snacks along.

The Tristan curse

The Met has had more than its share of problems with its "Tristan und Isolde" production, including illnesses and substitutions, but the show entered a new disaster level last March. Tenor Gary Lehman slid headfirst down the tilted stage and into the prompter's box, where there was an open flame. He was unhurt.

Anna Nicole Smith: The Opera

Composer Richard Thomas is hard at work on the libretto for an opera about the late Playboy centerfold and tabloid star, to premier in 2010 at London's Royal Opera House. Thomas, who admitted the subject matter might be considered "trashy," added that Ms. Smith's story is "very operatic and sad." Meanwhile, Opera Magazine accused the company of "having a midlife crisis" in its attempts to play to younger audiences.

The case of the missing organ

The Royal Opera House got into a fracas over a missing male organ in its ads for Verdi's "Rigoletto," when the company used an airbrushed picture of Argentinean actor Juan Pablo Di Pace. The affronted Di Pace complained, according to a spokesman, who observed that, "to Juan's embarrassment, his penis had been airbrushed out." The company agreed to stop using the image.

"The Fly" takes a nose-dive

Few critics were enthusiastic, but French reviewers were particularly withering about the premiere of the opera "The Fly," with music by film composer Howard Shore ("Lord of the Rings"). "Le Figaro" reviewer Christian Merlin called the opera "a monotonous mess," adding he was "so bored we strongly suspected the parasitic presence of the tsetse fly" (the bloodsucking African insect that causes sleeping sickness).

When is music noise?

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra dropped the world premiere of Swedish-Israeli composer Dror Feiler's "Halat Hisar" ("State of Siege") from a concert because it was "adverse to the health" of its musicians, according to the orchestra manager. Members of the 100-strong orchestra said they needed to wear headphones while rehearsing the piece, and several reported buzzing in the ears for hours after rehearsals. The 20-minute composition "starts with the rattle of machine-gun fire and gets louder," according to England's The Guardian.

The excitement is building

2008 heralded the performance of the sixth chord in a projected 639-year performance of the late John Cage's organ work, "As Slowly As Possible." Last summer, officials in Halberstadt, Germany, moved the weights holding down the pedals of an organ in the town's medieval church, changing to the sixth chord change in Cage's piece. The weights will hold those notes until the next change — which means the sound can be heard in the church all the time. The last chord is expected to be heard in 2640: Make those travel plans now!