Category: people

The Kennedy Center honors Placido Domingo, Chuck Berry, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Clint Eastwood and Angela Lansbury. The Washington Post profiles each. – Washington Post

British novelist and critic Malcolm Bradbury, who died this week, will be remembered as much for his famous writing classes as for his own satirical style. “He believed that a work of prose fiction or drama is seldom perfectly achieved in its early drafts, but that it emerges like a sculpture from a block of stone only through intellectual vigilance and meticulous rewriting.” – The Telegraph (UK)

Actors and writers gathered in London Thursday to mark the centenary of Oscar Wilde’s death with public readings, concerts, lectures, and exhibitions. – BBC

“Ben Heppner, a Canadian gentle giant of 44, is that rare bird – and, rarer still, he can not only sing the notes, but sing them with musical sensitivity and intelligence too, as well as making a fair stab at acting them out on stage.” – The Telegraph (UK)

A recording, long thought to be the only one of Oscar Wilde, probably isn’t. “Experts have analysed the recording using the latest techniques, and have concluded it is likely to be a forgery.” – BBC

Since he left the directorship of the National Symphony five years ago, Rostropovich hasn’t slowed down. He still gives 100 performances a year, he teaches, and the foundation he started with his wife has provided about $5 million in medicine, food and equipment to children’s hospitals and clinics in Russia.” – Los Angeles Times

Superstar musical theatre producer Cameron Mackintosh has announced he won’t be producing any more new musicals. “Mackintosh, one of the greatest creative and financial mainstays of musical theatre for three decades, says he is winding down and will in future produce only revivals.” – Sydney Morning Herald

Identification, that is. Luciano Pavarotti tried to check in at a Sheraton Hotel in Padua, Italy, but forgot his ID. The hotel refused to check him in. “Unfortunately, in Italy, we are required by law to ask patrons for proper and valid identification. We did everything we could to help him. We called the police for help – to try to get identification for him.” – New York Post

“His architecture is bracing and unsettling and even though nothing he has done yet has had the same popular impact as Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, he is clearly going to be the next big thing.” – The Observer (UK)

Arthur Miller is about to open another play on Broadway. And he’s about to turn 85. “Over the years, the critics have been all over the lot when it comes to judging Miller’s work. But in 1984, the critics and the public began re-examining Miller. And most of them liked what they found. So when he accepted the Tony for ‘Death of a Salesman’ last year, it wasn’t without a sense of well-earned, well-honed, irony – a sense that he’s been one of the victims in ‘The Crucible’ who finally got the chance to put his torturers on trial.” – Boston Globe