The company’s chairman says, “We have ceased business and we are trying to work out the arrangements with our secured creditor about what will be done with our very few remaining assets.” There will be no bankruptcy filing: “The cost of doing so would be wasted money.”
Tag: 02.12.09
Anna Nicole Smith, The Opera
If they can do it with Jerry Springer, why not Anna Nicole? Covent Garden has commissioned a new piece from composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas (who did, yes, Jerry Springer) for a 2011 premiere. The Royal Opera’s head says, “It is not going to be tawdry; it is going to be witty, clever, thoughtful and sad.”
Why An Anna Nicole Opera Is A Grand Idea
Charlotte Higgins: “Take Janacek’s Jenufa […] The heroine is stabbed in the face, abandoned by the lover who has made her pregnant, and the resultant baby is murdered by her stepmother. […] Or Lulu – Berg’s heroine could almost be a kind of model for Anna Nicole Smith.”
Cast Your Own Anna Nicole Smith Opera!
The cher public at Parterre Box is having a grand old time suggesting the ideal singers to re-enact the life of the former Vicki Lynn Hogan. So far, candidates for the title role range from Netrebko to Mattila to Bartoli; Plácido Domingo is suggested for the elderly husband, as is 106-year-old tenor Hugues Cuénod, and barihunks should be fighting to play baby-daddy Larry Birkhead.
Was East German Art Nothing But Socialist-Realist Propaganda? No.
Michael Kimmelman: “The show [“Art of Two Germanys” at LACMA] makes clear that the truth was actually more complicated, as it usually is, East German art having been more varied, not always politically compliant, closer at times to what was happening in West Germany than the West German art establishment either acknowledged or bothered to notice.”
Dada From Israel In Cincinnati (Now That’s Surreal)
The Cincinnati Museum of Art will be the only US venue for an exhibition of more than 200 Surrealist and Dada paintings, sculptures, photographs, etc. from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Duchamp’s urinal and mustachioed Mona Lisa will be there, as will Magritte’s boulder hovering over the sea and Man Ray’s landscape with lips.
Anne Hathaway To Do Shakespeare In Central Park This Summer
The Oscar-nominated actress will give what is apparently her first professional Shakespeare performance – as Viola in Twelfth Night, directed by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan (Proof). The Public Theatre’s other outdoor production this year will be JoAnne Akalaitis’s staging of The Bacchae, with music by Philip Glass.
Gramophone Mag Launches Online Archive
The venerable classical music magazine has opened in beta, at www.gramophone.net, “a searchable database containing every issue of Gramophone from April 1923 to the latest issue.” Each page is available as a PDF image and a plain-text version, and access is free except for the current issue (available to print subscribers).
Bacon Painting Fails To Sell At Auction
“A Francis Bacon painting, which had been expected to fetch a price of up to £6m, has failed to sell at an auction in London. The 1954 artwork, called Man in Blue VI, was one of a series of seven paintings completed by the artist. Bidders at Christie’s auction house failed to reach the asking price and the piece has gone back to the vendor.”
Ford’s Theatre Reopens, Celebrating Lincoln And Obama
The Obamas were in the audience and the stage was packed with stars as the newly refurbished Ford’s Theatre celebrated Lincoln’s bicentennial, but “the appearance that drew the night’s biggest round of ‘oohs’ was that by an inanimate object. After violinist Joshua Bell performed early in the program, it was revealed to the crowd that the instrument he used during ‘My Lord, What a Morning’ was last played at Ford’s on April 14, 1865 — the night of Lincoln’s assassination.”