John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, might not seem like the best libretto for an opera. For one thing, it’s awfully long. For another, destitute Dust Bowl denizens singing in grand operatic style? Seems a bit much. But the opera, which gets its premiere this weekend in Minnesota, is intended as “a work that will bring new audiences for an art form long thought of as irrelevant by American audiences – if they’ve even thought of it at all.”
Author: sbergman
BBC Singers Get A New Leader
“David Hill has been appointed chief conductor of the BBC Singers, effective this summer. The ensemble, which regularly gives performances for broadcast on BBC Radio 3, is Great Britain’s only full-time professional choir.”
I Gave At The Office
“Another workplace-based fundraising campaign, similar to the United Way drive but designed to support arts and culture, launches next week in Kansas City. The regional ArtsKC Fund will begin with a ‘beta test’ in 27 area workplaces… Other workplaces will roll out their campaigns throughout this month, March and April. Planners have modest goals for the inaugural campaign: They hope to raise $150,000.”
Rostropovich Hospitalized
Cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich is stable and in “satisfactory condition” after being admitted to a Moscow hospital with an unspecified illness. Rostropovich, who turns 80 in March, “was hospitalized last week in Paris, where he maintains a residence, and then decided to return to Moscow.”
Kitchen Sink Circling The Drain; Others May Follow
Kitchen Sink, a much-celebrated quarterly art and culture magazine based in Oakland, is in serious danger of folding after only a four-year run. “It was always a labor of love, existing month to month, so when its distributor, the San Francisco-based Independent Press Association, folded several weeks ago, ‘it just compounded the problems we were already having,’ said Publisher Carla Costa.” The IPA’s collapse has left several publications in the lurch, and everyone is scrambling for new options.
50 Years Of Film Outside The Hollywood Spotlight
“The San Francisco International Film Festival may not rank as an industry event that gets buzz off movie deals and celebrity sightings, but this April it will become the first film festival in the Americas to celebrate its 50th anniversary — and it is diligently documenting its cosmopolitan history.”
Can Oprah Save The Color Purple?
The Broadway version of The Color Purple got a major publicity boost when Oprah Winfrey added her name to the marquee. “With some innovative marketing – and a big push from Oprah, who invested $1 million in the show – The Color Purple caught on with black audiences, a group Broadway has tried (and largely failed) to capture in the past.” But the production is struggling now, and Michael Riedel says that The Big O needs to use her awesome powers of consumer persuasion to change that.
ACTRA Strike Ratchets Up The Noise
“A war of press releases erupted yesterday after the striking Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists said it was appealing a portion of this week’s Ontario Superior Court decision, specifically the part allowing the Canadian Film and Television Production Association to take the legal dispute to arbitration.”
Women Are Plenty Funny; Men Just Aren’t Laughing
Women aren’t funny. It’s a stereotype that has been around as long as… well, comedy itself. But since there is, in reality, no shortage of funny women, where does the notion that comedy is exclusive to men come from? Comedian Drew Carey offers one explanation: “It’s not so much that women aren’t funny, he explains, as that men don’t want them to be funny.”
Cinemas Fighting Early DVD Releases
Two major UK cinema chains are refusing to show a popular new movie, apparently as a protest over the studio’s decision to release the film on DVD only a couple of months after it premiered in theaters. “DVD release dates are a hot issue in the movie industry. Cinemas in Italy and Germany have already forced studios to delay the DVD releases of a string of films.”