Category: today’s top story

Curtis Sittenfeld, who wrote such fabulous sex scenes (really! and who thought it could be done?) in her Laura Bush novel, American Wife, launches a five-part online inauguration novella. You can read it yourself or — bonus — listen to Sittenfeld read it.

Less than four months after taking the reins at The Dallas Opera, Steel – who made the Miller Theatre a major force in New York’s cultural life – is turning around and coming back to the city to lead its troubled second opera company.

“The festival’s board is preparing to ask for emergency funds to meet basic running costs after a box office crisis last year saw sales slump by almost 10 per cent… The Fringe’s acting director, Tim Hawkins, said at least £300,000 was needed in the next three months alone to pay for the emergency box office service and recruitment costs of last year.”

A letter to Oprah: “I was born in Chicago in 1969. Shortly afterward, in 1941, my entire family was rounded up by the authorities and sent to the Theresienstadt camp, along with tens of thousands of other Jews…. The first few days there, separated from my family, denied even the most basic creature comforts, I was in a state of shock. I could hardly eat or sleep, and, to make matters worse, I had misplaced my cell-phone charger.”

“The new boss ought to dismantle City Opera’s current apparatus and reorganize it into a flexible roving troupe. … Forging a migrant opera company would force changes that a ruthless economy may demand anyway: simple but ingenious sets, a repertoire of intimate pieces, and an orchestra that can shrink and grow as the music, rather than the union, demands.”

“By winning trophies for best dramatic picture, director, screenplay and score, Slumdog Millionaire cemented its place as the awards season’s most beloved underdog: After losing its American distributor soon after it completed filming early last year, the modestly budgeted story of an unlikely Indian game show contestant now has become not only a powerful Academy Award contender but also a minor box-office hit.”

When Alistair Spalding “took over in 2004, the theater was in debt, and its programming had suffered from years of changing and shaky direction. Mr. Spalding has turned matters around by taking risks, trusting his instincts and continually supporting and producing new work. This approach, the antithesis of the market-research-driven philosophy that motivates most American theaters, has met with both financial and popular success.”

“The scenarios revealed by the survey are grim. The museums reported that state and local governments are already dealing with their deficits by reducing funding. Corporate, charitable and private support is also expected to fall off.”

“Patches of the once-lush lawn have been trampled to dust. Half of the underground sprinkler system doesn’t work. The sea wall around the Jefferson Memorial is sinking, and lately, wildlife is dying in the unfiltered waterways.”

“Dailies are sinking themselves under the weight of their own (possibly deliberate) ignorance of what constitutes distinguished writing these days–and by thinking that “distinguished” is the goal. Editors don’t even realize that the cultural critics they have (or once had) on their staffs–minds paid to be analytical–are the people best suited to help them think through the complex issues that have been raised in the last 20 years of print journalism, from declining readership to the internet.”