Hurricane Katrina dealt a devastating blow to New Orleans’ four major theatres, and while the rebuilding effort has made progress in some areas, the 85-year-old Orpheum Theatre may be a total loss. “Floodwater filled the theater’s 20-foot basement, wiping out all the electrical and mechanical equipment stored there, and rose to more than a foot in the performance hall. The Orpheum’s original oak floors swelled and buckled and likely cannot be salvaged. The stage, which sat under water for weeks, will also have to be replaced.” Making matters worse, the Orpheum had no flood insurance.
Tag: 02.12.06
Portland Arts: A Perpetual Crisis?
Portland is frequently cited as a city on the rise, with a vibrant urban core and a young and growing population. But for the city’s arts groups, the mythical “big time” frequently seems a distant dream. “After four precarious seasons at the ‘majors’ — the Oregon Symphony, Portland Opera, Portland Center Stage and Oregon Ballet Theatre — donations rose for the fiscal year ending in June. Ticket sales, however, fell behind. Talk about a mixed message. Donors seem to be saying, we’ll give you more money, but we won’t go to more concerts… It’s possible that these old-fashioned institutions that rely on audiences driving downtown to sit in formal halls can’t adapt to a digital age. Maybe they’re doomed to live in perpetual crisis.”
Schoenberg Still Polarizes
The Boston Symphony is playing an all-Schoenberg program this week. “The Schoenberg programming has had a polarizing effect, pitting the traditionalists, who would prefer their Beethoven served with a dose of Mozart, against the modernists, a group made up of musicians, students, critics, and subscribers who say they’re inspired by Levine’s commitment to a composer who, while long respected, has never been a hot ticket.”
A Missing Strad And Its Lost Journey
One day in 1967, David Margetts’ Stradivarius was stolen from his car. Some time late a woman found it on the side of a freeway in Los Angeles. It took 27 years before the instrument surfaced again…
Radio Silence
It’s been five years since the Chicago Symphony lost its regular series of radio broadcasts, and a replacement series is nowhere on the horizon. Wynne Delacoma says that the continued lack of any radio presence is directly attributable to stubbornness on the part of the CSO’s musicians and management, who have been loathe to challenge old compensation systems, even as other orchestras embrace new ideas. “Audiences in Chicago and around the world need to hear what the symphony is doing now, not simply what it did 10 or 20 or 30 years ago… It is a crime that [the CSO] is falling so far behind in the world of electronic media.”
Leaderless, But Never Directionless
The Chicago Symphony’s music director search is now two years old, and no progress has been visible in the quest to find a proper successor for Daniel Barenboim, who leaves the position in June. But no one in the organization seems to be in any sort of hurry, and if there seems to be a dearth of well-qualified candidates, the CSO isn’t bothered by it. Some are even suggesting that a music director isn’t terribly important to the fortunes of a truly great orchestra. “The CSO’s 2006-07 season, with trips to Carnegie Hall under Boulez and a residency in Florida next February, hardly signals an orchestra on hold.”
Big Building, No Buzz
A new 1000-foot tower is rising in Chicago. But “hardly anybody is talking about Waterview Tower, even though construction just started on the 82-story skyscraper at the southwest corner of Wacker Drive and Clark Street. The lack of buzz is enough to make you wonder: Is it because the design is good but kind of tame or because Chicagoans have become totally blase about great height? ‘Ho hum. Another tower taller than New York’s Chrysler Building. Who’s the next pol to get indicted at City Hall’?”
We’ve Got The Thieves, But Where’s The Loot?
It’s been a year and a half since gun-toting thieves charged into Oslo’s Munch Museum and left with two masterpieces by the museum’s namesake. “Six men stand accused of the crime; their trial is set to begin tomorrow. But the laborious, complicated investigation has stumbled in a fundamental and profoundly frustrating way. The police may have the thieves, but they don’t have the paintings.”