Category: today’s top story

Producers of the hit Broadway rock musical Rent have announced that the show will close June 1, ending a 12-year run that was one of Broadway’s longest. “An East Village rock version of Puccini’s opera La Bohème, Rent brought a youthful energy — and young theatergoers — to Broadway, to a degree not seen since Hair.“

“Conceding that the current television season cannot be salvaged, four major studios canceled dozens of writer contracts Monday. The move signals that development of next season’s crop of new shows also could be in jeopardy because of the 2-month-old writers strike.”

A new study arrives at the counter-intuitive conclusion that violent films may reduce crime rates.

“The criteria are so vague as to be meaningless and the judging process indecently hasty. What strategic thinking guides the decisions? None, I suggest.”

“The writers strike has quietly metamorphosed into the story of how Hollywood is being shut down by two unions, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. This unprecedented guild alliance not only upended the Globes and promises to wreak havoc with the Oscars, but has Hollywood’s studio overlords re-evaluating their dismissals of the WGA as a bunch of radicals and crackpots too hapless to engineer a successful labor stoppage.”

The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, is retiring, the museum’s spokesman, Harold Holzer, confirmed this evening. Mr. de Montebello, 71, has been director of the Met since 1977.

“Rome is a city whose art is inexhaustible; you could come here all your life and never see every altarpiece in every church. And yet, there is a very particular tale it tells about art. The city has never been a simple hive of innocent creativity, but a place where art and power meet. As such, it is the most corrupting place any art lover could visit – because it convinces you that power and wealth can, in fact, create the greatest art of all.”

“Divide culture consumers into four new groups, says an international study Oxford University researchers released late last month that will have far-reaching results for arts support everywhere.”

An Oxford University study says that the notion of a cultural elite made up of upper class individuals is no longer relevant to modern culture. “‘Univores,’ ‘Omnivores,’ ‘Paucivores’ and ‘Inactives’ are the new categories we can all find ourselves in.”

“De Waart is music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, which recently extended his contract through 2012. Next season, he will become principal conductor of the Santa Fe Opera, an important post recently vacated by Alan Gilbert, new conductor of the New York Philharmonic.”