“Bollywood dancing has hit the northern English county of Yorkshire – famed for its love of what was once Britain’s favourite dish before it was overtaken by chicken tikka masala. In fact, so popular is Bollywood dancing in Yorkshire that the county’s pre-eminent theatre … is staging a performance of a play called Bollywood Jane throughout June. More than 60 eager young people from all walks of life are auditioning to take part….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Literary Classics, Now In New, Fun-Size Snack Form!
“Two leading publishers have hit on the idea of boiling down classic novels for modern audiences who are too busy/stupid to read the real thing. … HarperCollins is reducing War and Peace from almost 1,500 pages to 900. It says it will give us less war. Perhaps it has hit on the answer. Why not The Only Child Karamazov, Le Misérable, A Tale of Two Medium-Sized Towns, Limited Expectations and A Couple of Days in the Country?”
‘Pride and Prejudice’ No. 1, Bible No. 6
A World Book Day poll at worldbookday.com asked readers to list the ten books they can’t live without. “In the end, quality tells. People may have bought The Da Vinci Code in its millions but, when asked to name the most precious book they have read, they relegated it to 42nd place and chose Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.”
Was Wagner A Cross-Dresser? A Letter Suggests So
“A previously unpublished letter by Richard Wagner to a firm of Milanese couturiers offers the intriguing possibility that the great composer was, in fact, a cross-dresser. The letter is published for the first time today in the inaugural edition of the Wagner Journal.”
Just Say No To Arts Ambassadorship
Labour’s recent interest in cultural diplomacy has Tiffany Jenkins sounding a warning to artists. “Who elected the director of the British Museum as the saviour of the Middle East or the Royal Shakespeare Company as the solution to global warming? … Culture is not for mopping the minister’s brow, flattering Blair, Brown, or Cameron. Cultural foreign policy is one piece of political theatre where the cultural sector should bow out.”
Make A Joyful Noise: Keillor On The Met At The Movies
After watching “Eugene Onegin” at a Minnesota multiplex, Garrison Keillor joins the chorus of bravos greeting the Metropolitan Opera’s live broadcasts: “I’m not an opera critic so I can’t compare this ‘Onegin’ to the 1948 Bolshoi production or comment on Miss Fleming’s use of sprezzatura in the Letter Aria, but I can say how joyful it is to see great artists take big chances on the big screen and rip loose from the moorings of cool and sing with red-blooded passion.”
NYC Opera Said To Court Paris Opera’s Mortier
“Will Gerard Mortier, who once scandalized the diamonds-and-dirndl set at the Salzburg Festival with an operetta staging featuring cocaine-snorting, scalping, slaughter, incest, Jew-bashing and child abuse, take over the New York City Opera, a company in need of new leadership? Mortier, a Belgian-born baker’s son who is 63, is said to be a top candidate to run the company, a rival of the grander Metropolitan Opera, also at Lincoln Center. He is currently the general manager of the Opera de Paris….”
Bollingen Prize Goes To Wellesley Prof
“Yale University has awarded the $100,000 Bollingen Prize in Poetry for 2007 to Wellesley College English professor Frank Bidart. A three-judge panel said Bidart’s poems — ‘eerie, probing, sometimes shocking, always subtle — venture into psychic terrain left largely unmapped in contemporary poetry.'”
Amid Rapid Expansion, Envisioning Museums’ Future
“As the art market booms and interest in collecting grows, museums around the world are expanding with new buildings, new branches and new styles. … A new golden age of museums or a profit-motivated bubble?” Major gallery directors convened in Tokyo this month to ponder their survival strategy.
Met Eyes China For ‘Emperor’ Tour
“The Metropolitan Opera, hoping to tour China for the first time, is negotiating to perform Tan Dun’s ‘The First Emperor’ with tenor Placido Domingo there to coincide with the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”