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One night when I was 16 I was at a party at a friend's house when four people ran into the house and attacked myself and five others.

Breaking news: Seattle Opera has named Aidan Lang to succeed Speight Jenkins upon the latter's retirement next year.Jenkins is a legend in the opera biz, after 30 years of leading the company, where he has successfully produced several Ring cycles and launched any number of important careers, as well as overseeing the complete renovation of the opera house. He announced a couple of years back that he would be retiring, and the company started the search for the next general director. (Planning is a good thing. Yes, I'm looking at you, Met Opera.)Lang comes with a deep operatic background: he is a director who has worked at Glyndebourne and the Welsh National Opera; he was the artistic director of the Buxton Festival, and he is currently General Director of the New Zealand Opera. He directed the first Ring production at the tiny Teatro Amazonas in Manaus.Seattle Opera will present some challenges; the company has had financial difficulties and has cut back on productions. Given the renaissance at the Seattle Symphony, perhaps Lang can spark a comeback at the Opera. Welcome!

I've been hearing for a couple of years now that the retirement of Speight Jenkins, the (mostly) beloved and longtime leader of Seattle Opera was "around the corner." Today, that retirement has finally been announced, as well as Jenkins's replacement Aidan Lang, who was found after a hush-hush, two-year search process: Aidan Lang, respected in the opera community for positions of leadership with New Zealand Opera, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, the Buxton Festival and Opera Zuid, has been named Seattle Opera’s third General Director effective September 1, 2014. Lang succeeds Speight Jenkins, who has led the company for more than three decades. Founded in 1963, Seattle Opera celebrates its 50th Anniversary beginning with the August 2013 production of Wagner’s Ring and culminating with the 2014 International Wagner Competition and 50th Anniversary Concert and Speight Celebration in August 2014. This announcement marks a moment in Seattle's broader culture as well. Over the past six years or so, Seattle's other two classic performing-arts organizations (the ballet and the symphony) have transitioned away from longtime leaders (Kent Stowell/Francia Russell and Gerard Schwarz) who were intensely focused on institution-building, establishing a foothold for their medium in the city's consciousness, and congealing a reliable audience and donor cohort. The ballet replaced Stowell/Russell with Peter Boal and the symphony replaced Schwarz with Ludovic Merlot, both exciting choices for audiences in Seattle (and beyond) who were more than ready to see those sometimes staid-seeming institutions push forward into a more daring and engaged phase of their aesthetic development. Will the 57 year-old Lang inspire the same excitement among opera geeks? Either way, the transition seems to have been meticulously choreographed. Some of Lang bona fides from Seattle Opera's announcement are below the jump. And you can follow him on Twitter. His most recent tweet: "Speighters gonna Speight."* Lang has served as General Director of New Zealand Opera since 2006 with a goal of ensuring that every production is theatrically stimulating and musically ambitious. Working collaboratively is a top priority for Lang, and during his tenure New Zealand Opera implemented a series of collaborations with such companies as Glyndebourne, Opera North, and Welsh National Opera, bringing exciting productions from directors Nikolaus Lehnhoff (Jenůfa), Tim Albery (Macbeth), and Christopher Alden (Turandot) to New Zealand. In addition to bringing productions in, Lang made it a priority to develop the capacity to build productions in the country, establishing New Zealand’s first-ever opera production workshop. This achievement has resulted in international co-productions with Scottish Opera (L’italiana in Algeri), Victorian Opera (Serse), and this year’s Der Fliegende Holländer with Opera Queensland in Australia. Among other productions, he directed the first Brazilian production of Wagner’s Ring at the historic Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. Other noted productions include Le Comte Ory (Welsh National Opera), Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (Lisbon), The Turn of the Screw (Salzburg) and the British premieres of The Magic Fountain by Frederick Delius (Scottish Opera) and Cornet Christoph Rolke’s Song of Love and Death by Siegfried Matthus (Glyndebourne). As Artistic Director of the Buxton Festival, Lang expanded the Festival to include Baroque and contemporary music, tripled its audience attendance, and delivered significant operating surpluses in each year. * Not actually his most recent tweet. In fact, not one of his tweet at all. It was something Dominic said after we got the retirement announcement. [ Comment on this story ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

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Aidan Lang, respected in the opera community for positions of leadership with New Zealand Opera, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, the Buxton Festival and Opera Zuid, has been named Seattle Opera’s third General Director effective September 1, 2014.  Lang succeeds Speight Jenkins, who has led the company for more than three decades. Lang will join Seattle Opera as General Director Designate on March 10, 2014, working closely with Jenkins and Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale during the transition period.  Jenkins continues as General Director through August 2014 and has created the programming for both the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons.  Beginning immediately, Lang will be included in planning for the 2015-16 season, working towards his first fully programmed season in 2016-17. Lang has served since 2006 as General Director of New Zealand Opera, where he implemented a series of collaborations with such companies as Glyndebourne, Opera North, and Welsh National Opera, bringing exciting productions from directors Nikolaus Lehnhoff (Jenufa), Tim Albery (Macbeth), and Christopher Alden (Turandot) to New Zealand.

It’s hard for externals to know how popular a particular messaging service is. Yes all your friends might use it, but does the public at large? And is it larger, or smaller than other similar services? Telecom, a well-named New Zealand provider of Internet and mobile service has lifted the curtain as to what its smartphone users are using to stay in touch. The data is brilliant, as it provides a direct window into consumer usage patters, and, the kicker, it directly compares rival services and companies. The data, taken from Telecom mobile customers in a one month period (May, 2013): 150,000 used Apple’s iMessage service 140,000 used Facebook messenger 78,000 used Viber 35,000 used Microsoft Live Messenger 32,000 used Microsoft Skype 25,000 used Google Talk 23,000 used WhatsApp messenger iMessage over Facebook! Viber over Skype! Google Talk ranking so low! WhatsApp barely showing up at all! To see iMessage isn’t a surprise. Apple recently announced that users had sent 800 billion messages through the service. WhatsApp recently announced that its users send over 27 billion messages per day. Quite obviously, mobile use demands different communication patterns than desktop computer usage; the Skype number wouldn’t be as small if all messaging usage across platforms was counted for each customer. However, in the mobile realm, it’s more than interesting that Apple has managed to top the Facebook behemoth. The other question asked by the above data is how country specific it may be; would Viber rank as high in Spain, or California? I doubt it. Still, the data is damned interesting. Read it again. Then drop knowledge on your coworkers. Top Image Credit: Benedict Adam

Telecom is exploring the possibility of letting its home broadband customers watch English Premier League football matches at a discounted price.