Cleveland’s two opera companies are on the verge of combining operations while maintaining their separate missions. “Like many American opera companies, Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland have struggled in recent seasons with deficits and declining attendance. The two organizations view a merger, no matter how challenging, as a means of controlling finances and presenting a reasonable number of performances of varied repertoire.”
Tag: 02.11.06
The Met’s New Direction
There may be no more conservative institution in American classical music than New York’s Metropolitan Opera. For decades, the Met has catered to an audience that loves old chestnuts, respects tradition above all else, and generally abhors the experimental. So when the company’s incoming general manager starts talking about wholesale change and using terms like “radical reinvention,” a lot of people get very nervous. But Peter Gelb is apparently quite serious in his desire to remake the Met for the 21st century.
Give ‘Em An Inch, And They’ll Take All Their Art Back
“With a proposed settlement from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in hand, Italian authorities are escalating their demands for the return of allegedly looted antiquities from other American museums… Italian investigators say they have identified hundreds more allegedly looted objects at U.S. museums. An additional 10,000 objects mentioned in the records have not yet been located.” Italy is very serious about recovering as many of the objects as possible, and is willing to go to court if negotiations with the museums involved do not result in a satisfactory resolution.
Opening Torino With Art & Absurdity
The visually captivating and decidedly over-the-top opening ceremonies of the twentieth Winter Olympiad proved once and for all that “other nations can be as cheesy as the United States. That people the world over seem to share a common urge to stage bizarre interpretive dance… The Olympics are ordained to be completely self-important — no smirking allowed! — which perhaps is why the opening festivities always seem so campy. Still, as a general spectacle, last night’s show wasn’t bad.”