Category: today’s top story

“Can science explain why the same song we enjoy singing with relatives or congregants drives us to visions of sugar-plum homicide when it blares across the public-address system Chez Target?” Actually, it can…

A firestorm broke out this fall when the Cleveland Plain Dealer removed its classical critic, Donald Rosenberg, from covering the Cleveland Orchestra because of a perceived bias against the work of the orchestra’s music director. Now Rosenberg (who is still employed at the paper) is suing the Plain Dealer for age discrimination and the orchestra for defamation.

“Faced with a sharp decline in revenue, National Public Radio said Wednesday it will pare back its programming and institute its first organization-wide layoffs in 25 years.” The network will lay off 64 employees, about 7% of its workforce, and eliminate the weekday programs Day to Day and News & Notes.

“While some rumors persist that there’s an unfinished novel David Foster Wallace was working on before he died in September, at least one work from the author is definitely on the horizon. Wallace’s publisher, Little, Brown, is going to release This Is Water in April 2009, which is the address the author delivered at Kenyon College’s commencement in 2005.”

“After 58 years and more than 200 productions, the Baltimore Opera Company will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-law protection today amid dwindling ticket sales and contributions. The remaining two productions of the 2008-2009 season, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, have been canceled. Ticket-holders will not receive refunds.”

“New York’s Metropolitan Opera, with ticket sales lagging and the economy in recession, said it will offer some of its priciest seats for weekend evening performances at $25 each for the rest of the season. Starting today, the opera company will hold a weekly drawing on its Web site, Metopera.org, for orchestra and grand tier seats that usually sell for $140 to $295, Met General Manager Peter Gelb said.”

The recession is impacting colleges. So what could help? “The nation’s higher-education leaders could hardly come to Washington and ask for a federal bailout of their institutions, but there is a step they could take to keep their doors open to as many students as possible: Colleges and universities should use their campuses year-round.”

“When Eli Broad announced recently in a Times opinion piece that he wanted to help bail out the financially woebegone Museum of Contemporary Art by making a $30-million ‘investment’ in its rescue, his choice of words made some wonder what he might want in return.” But Broad said this week that he isn’t attaching any strings to his offer.

“La Scala’s opening night of the season, the Milanese social event that brims with VIPs, fur coats and diamonds, may be canceled for the first time in four decades as musicians protest labor contracts. The premiere is a key source of funding for Italy’s most famous theater.”