“Given its culturally rich and tumultuous landscape, small wonder that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 semiautobiographical novel, ‘The Great Gatsby,’ has been a favorite for adaptation among playwrights, composers and film producers. The period oozes potential, especially as populated with Fitzgerald’s eccentric characters, most of them rich, spoiled and imperious.” Now to dancce…
Tag: 02.04.07
Has The Met Opera Created A New Art Form?
“We are children of the video age. However many hours you may have spent in theaters or concert halls, the likelihood is you’ve spent vastly more time in front of a video screen or listening to recordings. For most of us, our primary relationships with performing artists are no longer through live performances but with their electronic offspring.” That’s why The Metropolitan Opera’s new experiment may be the most significant advance since supertitles.
To Clap, Not To Clap… Do We Still Care?
“The so-called rules about applauding at classical music concerts appear to be relaxing. Even in the bastions of classical music — New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s BBC Proms at Albert Hall, the Metropolitan Opera and more — you are likely to hear premature clapping. It appears the experience of an orchestra concert, opera or recital is becoming less restrictive — and that deserves a round of applause.”
(Ir)repressible
“A team of psychiatrists and literary scholars reports that it could not find a single account of repressed memory, fictional or not, before the year 1800. The researchers offered a $1,000 reward last March to anyone who could document such a case in a healthy, lucid person. None of the responses were convincing, the authors wrote, suggesting that repressed memory is a ‘culture-bound syndrome’ and not a natural process of human memory.”
Buying Art By Email (Sign Of The Times)
“It’s another sign of the acceleration of the contemporary art market: New works, even in the six-figure range, are selling by digital image alone.”
Distopian Feelings About “Utopia”
Tom Stoppard’s play has been acclaimed. But some, like Charles Isherwood, are not so sure. “Some may fear, as my new acquaintance from the plaza did, that to admit dissatisfaction or outright dislike is to advertise one’s intellectual obtuseness or philistinism. The coercive reasoning goes something like this: Everyone says it’s brilliant; I am bored; therefore I am not smart enough to appreciate its brilliance. The play isn’t a failure: I am.”
Ads For (And By?) The People
“The marketing world has been abuzz about the concept of consumer-generated ads, drawn to the democratic aura YouTube and other websites have created by letting anyone post videos.”
But the contests are attracting pros. “Attracting pros to a contest billed as being for average Janes and Joes has generated controversy in the advertising world. After all, the competitions are overseen by ad agencies.”
Wanted: A New Kind Of Album
“The album as a format is dead. It is so, so dead that its obituary has been written approximately 981 times in the past five years (that’s how many times the phrase ‘death of the album’ came up when I put the phrase into a Google search). How can the rock album survive? Look to these approaches.
The New Joni Mitchell Ballet
“With 9 songs and 27 dancers, the result is equal parts Busby Berkeley spectacle, political jeremiad and rock opera, a collection of songs that form an essay on war and incipient environmental apocalypse. Young, athletic bodies are sent off to kill and die. The earth is electronically set for destruction. Dire biblical prophecies and the grave warnings of Indian chiefs ring true.”
The Art Of YouTube
“Just as early tsk-tskers of such derided mass products as comic books (today they’re called graphic novels), radio (people will stop reading books!), dime paperbacks (people won’t read the right books!) and TV (two words: Paddy Chayefsky) were proven wrong, those who summarily relegate YouTube to the low-cultural ashcan are missing not only its artistic potential, but the artistry that can already be found there.”