Well, at least among those written in English – and as chosen by a roster of critics polled by BBC Culture. Have a look, nod or shake your head, and argue away.
Tag: 01.19.15
Trial Begins Over Theft Of Priceless Santiago De Compostela Manuscript
A laid-off electrician at the Spanish city’s cathedral is accused of having stolen the 12th-century Codex Calixtinus, considered the world’s first tourist guide (for pilgrims to Compostela) and one of the most important surviving sources for medieval music. The manuscript was stolen in 2011 and was found (along with other manuscripts and €1.2 million in cash) in the electrician’s garage the following year.
Inside Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade: Can It Evolve The Way The City Has?
A longtime resident who’d never seen the century-old New Year’s Day spectacle goes behind the scenes with one of the old-line South Philly clubs, meets the new brigades that draw from the city’s growing population of art-minded Millennials, and remarks on some of the parade’s worryingly retrograde elements. (Then she hits the after-party on Two Street.)
Engage With The Arts? So What’s The Problem?
“After two decades of declining audience numbers, is that decline an aberration or a new reality? Is the demand for the core arts now permanently smaller than it once was, or is it that the demand for the core arts in the way we deliver them is what has permanently changed?”
The Woman Who Made Playboy A Literary Outlet, Alice K. Turner, Dead At 75
“While not known most widely for its literary fiction, Playboy was for many years one of the few mainstream monthlies that published ambitious short stories. Ms. Turner became fiction editor in 1980 and guarded that tradition, shepherding works by John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Bob Shacochis and other acclaimed writers into pages better known for Playmates and other pinups.”
Yoko Nagae Ceschina, 82, Japanese-Italian Countess And Classical Music’s Fairy Godmother
A young Japanese harpist who went to Venice to study and met and married a wealthy nobleman, she spent her adult life discreetly but lavishly funding major performers and institutions – and sometimes taking personal care of them.
Spain Arrests Alleged Forgers Of Picasso, Matisse, Miró
“Three suspected members of an art forgery ring were arrested in the Spanish cities of Zaragoza and Tarragona … Accused of peddling drawings falsely attributed to Miró, Picasso, and Matisse, they’ve been charged with crimes against intellectual property and fraud.”
Houston Grand Opera Zooms Past Its $165M Fundraising Goal
The Inspiring Performance campaign, launched quietly in 2007 and publicly in 2012, raised $172.9 million to “fund world premieres, new productions of established operas and the company’s first staging of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung.”
Russia’s New Film Rules Could Outlaw Its Oscar Nominee
“Russia has introduced new rules regarding the issuing of exhibition licenses for films, decreeing that films ‘defiling the national culture, posing a threat to national unity and undermining the foundations of the constitutional order’ will not be allowed to be screened in cinemas.” As it happens, more than a few people in Russia (including the culture minister) think that description could apply to Leviathan, which has already won a Golden Globe
Were These Two Gay Erotic Novels Written By Oscar Wilde?
“Teleny, anonymously published in 1893, describes the erotic relationship between two men – Camille Des Grieux, who has ‘always struggled against the inclinations of my nature’, and Rene Teleny. Its prequel Des Grieux was published in 1899. The authorship of Teleny was first attributed to Wilde decades later by the French bookseller Charles Hirsch, who had opened a London shop in 1889, and who counted Wilde among his customers.”