Three of the five unions representing Opera di Roma employees say they’ll shut down the entire run of Manon Lescaut, starring Anna Netrebko and conducted by Riccardo Muti, that opens Thursday if management doesn’t withdraw plans – required by law – to revamp the budget and reduce the staff at the near-bankrupt opera house.
Tag: 02.24.14
Dresden’s Semper Opera Fires New Boss Before He Starts
Saxony’s arts minister said that Serge Dorny, who had received widespread praise for reinvigorating the Opéra de Lyon and was due to start full-time in Dresden in September, “has managed to gamble away any confidence employees might have had in him in the shortest possible period.”
Does Reading Literature Make You More Moral? (It’s Not a Ridiculous Question)
“So, if the answer to the question of whether reading literature makes us more moral is so obviously ‘no’, why ask it in the first place? And why did so many people show up to the event to consider the question?” Paula M.L. Moya allows as how literature helps shape what we consider to be moral in the first place.
‘Annie’ Co-Creator Disses Recent Broadway Revival (As His Colleagues Run the Other Way)
Martin Charnin, lyricist and director of the original production (and of an upcoming non-Equity tour): “The entire [original] creative team (Tom, Charles, and I) simply had to restore the charm and the magic of the musical, that has endured for lo, these many years, and that seemed to veer off-course in the recent Broadway production.” Composer Charles Strouse and book writer Thomas Meehan very promptly disavowed Charnin’s statement.
Amtrak’s Writers-in-Residence Idea: What Would DFW Do?
Vauhini Vara looks to David Foster Wallace’s great cruise ship essay, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”.
Here Is This Year’s Gender Count For Literary Publications
“Turnarounds like the Paris Review’s make it clear that with the right editorial effort, putting more sustainable gender practices into action isn’t too difficult for these magazines at the top of the major market heap.”
Fan Fiction Is Huge. So How Do Publishers Get In?
“Literary publishing’s uneasy relationship with fan fiction has been complicated by the realization that fandom is a huge potential market—one stocked with both prolific authors and enthusiastic readers. But tapping that market is a dilemma few publishers seem quite prepared to engage.”
How The Public Square Helps Or Hurts Civil Protest
It’s an “increasingly universal phenomenon: the public square as an epicenter of democratic expression and protest, and the lack of one—or the deliberate manipulation of such a space—as a way for autocrats to squash dissent through urban design.”
What Is This Theatre Pipeline Of Which You Speak?
“Today, the pipeline flows in many directions at once. Theaters genuinely interested in serving their communities would do well to develop twenty-first century ways of making theater.”
Something In The Water? The World’s Oldest (And Best) Pianists
Here’s a gallery of performances by some of the piano world’s best artists when they were very old.