There is a global ‘rash’ of new theatres and especially concert halls, but the fastest growth is in America, a conference of the International Society for the Performing Arts reported last month. Will the boom continue? Historically, “theatre-building is the sort of thing people do at the end of a golden era (as at the turn of the 20th century) when confidence is high and wealth is ample. Now, tax revenues are weak and wealthy donors less wealthy. The curtain may be about to fall, at least for an intermission.”
Tag: 01.02.03
How Civil Servants Sabotaged Edinburgh’s Plans For An Opera House
Back in 1971, after ten years of lobbying and planning, Edinburgh announced it would build a world class opera house. But newly released documents show why the hall was never built. It was sabotaged by civil servants who dubbed blueprints an “expensive fiasco” waiting to happen. “It had taken ten years for Edinburgh’s opera house plans to be accepted – and just a few months for government civil servants to sow the seeds of doubt which eventually led to the whole idea being scrapped.”
What The Parthenon Marbles Would Look Like In Greece
The campaign to put pressure on the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece is intensifying. The Greek goervnemtn is building a new museum to display the marbles should Britain return them. Now a high-tech exhibition in the British House of Parliament shows what the marbles would look like in the new museum. “The display includes a computer-simulated walk through the museum showing the reunited marbles displayed in glass cases.”
Hmong – Forging A New Literary Tradition
Hmong society has no literary tradition. “The first Hmong writing system was developed by Catholic missionaries in the 1950s. Until then, all storytelling was spoken.” So a new book collecting young Hmong writers’ work is something extraordinary.
Customizing Your Record Collection
Vox Music Group has announced that it will burn individual CD copies of any part of its vast out-of-print catalog through a web site, eliminating the traditional process of a small repeat pressing, which often has been quite unprofitable. The announcement is exciting in part because it may signal a new wave of such ‘individual’ pressings by other companies, but also because Vox’s old recordings are some of the most extensive and sought after in the business.
Redefining ‘Hero’ in Beijing
Every nation has had its tyrants, and China had a doozy 2,200 years ago in the emperor Qin Shihuang, whom historians have compared to Stalin in his ruthlessness and diregard for his people. But a new film by acclaimed director Zhang Yimou is making waves in modern China for its sympathetic portrayal of the emperor. The film, Hero, “despite its complicated subject, has delighted Beijing’s mandarins, who are submitting it as China’s nominee for best foreign film at the Academy Awards. And it has infuriated some Chinese critics, who have panned Mr. Zhang’s plot for promoting a philosophy of servitude.”
How To Start A Piano Tuner Riot
“Don A. Gilmore, an amateur piano player and professional engineer from Kansas City, Mo, has developed an electronic system that he says could allow pianists to tune their own instruments at the touch of a button.” The system relies on heated strings, electricity, and an elaborate computer program which ‘remembers’ an initial tuning and can replicate it under almost any circumstances. The self-tuning models won’t be cheap, but then, neither are piano tuners.
Bang On A Can
The latest fad being embraced by the type of folks who rented tae-bo tapes by the case back in the late ’90s, and swore by their carrot juice in the ’80s is “taiko, one of the biggest crazes to hit the boomer generation since pilates and green tea.” It’s not a new idea, really: taiko combines the idea of music as personal therapy with the undeniable truth that it’s fun to make a lot of noise and bang on stuff. But this is more than a new-age experiment in self-esteem. Taiko ensembles are springing up all over, and the noise they make is real music, taken very seriously by those who create it.
More Than Just The ‘Wrapping Artist’
A new exhibit at a private estate in Florida is providing a unique look into the process and development of one of the world’s best-known and most controversial artists. Christo, the large-scale installation artist who is reportedly in talks to mount a massive work in New York’s Central Park, may be best-known for wrapping the Reichstag, but he and his collaborator insist that they are neither one-trick ponies nor cultural commentators. They believe in letting art just be art, even if their work occasionally causes political firestorms.
Who Was Shakespeare?
The debate over who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare has spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists, with Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Queen Elizabeth I all contenders as the ultimate pretender. But some Shakespeare devotees think there’s some pretty shoddy detective work behind the drive to discredit the Bard. “For example, elaborate scenarios have to be concocted for the lives of Marlowe, Rutland, Oxford, and Elizabeth I because they all died many years before the final play was written.”