After two years of big deficits, the San Francisco Opera has finished its most recent fiscal year in the black with a tiny surplus of $27,000 on an operating budget of $54.6 million. “The result, contained in a recently concluded financial audit, marks a striking step forward after consecutive budget deficits of $7.7 million and $4. 4 million.”
Tag: 02.21.05
Edinburgh Film Chief Blasts Renovation Proposal
“The head of the Edinburgh International Film Festival today hit out at the proposed redevelopment of one of the city’s most famous cinemas. Only the art deco facade of the former Odeon in Clerk Street will be retained under plans to demolish the historic building to make way for a restaurant and bar and a 240-room student housing complex. The controversial proposal has disappointed film chiefs and heritage watchdogs, who have called for the cinema to be saved from the bulldozer.”
St. Louis: So Close, And Yet So Far
The two sides in the 8-week-old St. Louis Symphony work stoppage are still wrangling, but mediated negotiating sessions very nearly produced a deal last week. The SLSO’s president has claimed in the press that new musician demands derailed the deal at the last minute, but the musicians’ chief negotiator has been speaking with ArtsJournal blogger Drew McManus, and he says that it was the management that reneged on an agreed-to framework, leaving the two sides stalemated a mere $4000 apart.
No Laughing At The Narrators (Until They Leave The Room)
“As a researcher at Recorded Books, the audiobook publisher, Paul Topping hunts for precise pronunciations of foreign expressions, medical maladies and obscure geographical and biological names.” His job also requires that he keep from laughing when narrators ask him how to pronounce much simpler words. “Proper pronunciation is serious business among audiobook publishers, who are enjoying double-digit sales growth in an otherwise stagnant publishing industry. When reviewers hear gaffes, they let it rip.”
Aboriginal Music Goes Industrial
“An industry group dedicated to Canada’s aboriginal music scene was launched at the East Coast Music Conference and Awards over the weekend.” The National Aboriginal Recording Industry Association already has “more than 100 founding members, including ‘movers and shakers within aboriginal music.'”
Scots Plea For Architectural Mercy Killing
“When the makers of a new Channel 4 series on Britain’s ugliest buildings invited viewers to nominate the eyesore they would most like to see demolished they were hardly prepared for a request to flatten an entire town. But civic pride appears to be truly dead and buried in Cumbernauld, a 1950s creation that is home to 52,000 souls 15 miles northeast of Glasgow. Its residents were among the first to contact the programme, begging for dynamite and bulldozer to deliver them oblivion.” The town’s design won architectural awards in the brutalist-besotted 1970s, but the 2003 “Idler’s Book of Crap Towns” called Cumbernauld the second-worst place to live in the UK.
Hollywood’s Dirty Little Military Secret
Not much is spoken about the cozy relationship between Hollywood and the American military. “All a producer needs do for assistance, it seems, is submit five copies of his script to the Pentagon for approval, make whatever script changes the Pentagon suggests, film the script exactly as approved by the Pentagon and preview the finished product for Pentagon officials before it’s shown to its broader audience. And many do this gladly. It is Hollywood’s dirtiest little secret, and the long-term effect on generations of young Americans is an unknown. How many of those killed in Iraq died because they joined up after they saw what was presented in a film?”
Is British Council Exhibit Racist?
Two national newspapers ran full-page article last week accusing the British Council of depicting Britain as racist, violent and impoverished in a traveling exhibition. “British Council staff were flabbergasted because the exhibition has been mounted successfully since 2003 in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. The reaction in there was positive for the UK, and it received lavish praise.”
Welsh National Opera’s New Digs
For the first time in 60 years, the Welsh National Opera has a home of its own. “In its opening weekend at its new home, WNO threw down its gauntlet, offering two trademark shows: Traviata, a company show that foregrounds the talents of its chorus, and a new production of Berg’s Wozzeck from director Richard Jones and conductor Vladimir Jurowski, a partnership that has provided WNO with some of its most visionary stagings in recent years.”
The Gay Simpson
“In an episode titled “There’s Something About Marrying,” a longtime character on Fox’s 15-year hit – it was Marge Simpson’s sister Patty Bouvier, a closely held secret until the 8 p.m. broadcast – came out of the closet while Homer Simpson conducted dozens of same-sex weddings after small-town Springfield legalized the unions in a bid to increase tourism. As television’s longest-running situation comedy, “The Simpsons” is no stranger to hot-button social, religious and political issues, mocking wardrobe malfunctions, Hollywood liberals and born-again Christians, among other targets. But when a show as mainstream and popular as this takes on one of the most divisive issues in American society, it is certain to attract attention.”