Friday night, the English National Opera finally got to play in its newly refurbished home, after a long delay. “The good news is that the performance finally went ahead, the first building block in the first ENO Ring for more than a quarter of a century. The bad news is that, at the last moment, ENO told opera critics to stay away, citing inadequate stage preparation time since the company reclaimed its home theatre this month after an eight-month refit.”
Tag: 02.28.04
In RoadTrip: End Of The Tour
Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: “There are those who would say that it’s foolhardy to schedule back-to-back concerts in Scotland and Finland, that the odds of everything going right with the travel, the cargo, the instrument trunks, the time change, and the weather are just too slim. These cynics are unquestionably right, and we needed every ounce of good luck we could get today for this concert in Lahti to come off as planned…”
The Barnes In Limbo
The judge considering whether or not the Barnes Collection should be allowed to move to Philadelphia has put the brakes on the proceedings. On January 29, “The judge said he was ‘hamstrung by the total lack of hard numbers in evaluating these proposals,’ calling the construction price only a ‘guesstimate.’ There had, he said, been no architectural plans, feasibility studies or proformas projecting the Philadelphia project’s success or the costs of maintaining three separate locations.”
Land Of The Free – US Government Warns Publishers About Books From Iran
Iran has a rich tradition of literature, yet Americans see little of it. If the American government has its way, they’ll see even less. The US government has “warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy.”
Revising The Birth Of The Blues
In the popular mythology of the blues, Robert Johnson has been credited with a pivotal role in creating the music. Yet a new book suggests that Johnson was really a minor figure, and that his “primacy was largely a creation of white fans and music critics of the 1960’s. “Very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note.”
An Attack On French Intelligence?
Members of France’s intelligentsia have risen up to complain that the French government is attacking the country’s “intelligence.” “Underneath the polemics, as usual, lie money and politics. The protesters say that President Jacques Chirac’s government has been trimming cultural, educational and scientific budgets to the detriment of the country’s ‘intelligence.’ While the government has a solid majority in parliament and the Socialist opposition is in disarray, the intellectuals are using next month’s nationwide regional elections to get attention.”
The Billionaire Kids Book Author
JK Rowling has joined the billionaire’s club. “Once an unemployed single mother, she has now sold more than 250 million books around the world. Rowling was ranked at number 552 out of a record number of 587 billionaires in the Forbes list. The writer said last year that the enormous wealth the Harry Potter books have brought her made her feel guilty.”
Royal Academy Buys Menuhin Archive
The Royal Academy of Music has bought the archive of papers, photos and memorabilia of the late Yehudi Menuhin. “The archive contains important musical manuscripts by many of the composers who worked with Menuhin, including music from his collaborations with Ravi Shankar and Stephane Grappelli. In addition to detailed correspondence with Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok and Benjamin Britten, the archive includes letters from such non-musical figures as Einstein and Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.”
Does America Exist Because We Shop?
America often gets criticized for being consumerist and driven by its appetite for consumption of goods. Yet, writes one historian, it may be precisely this talent for shopping that allowed America to break from Britain back in the 1700s and create a modern nation that works.
Cezanne Theft In Australia – Really?
An art collector in New South Wales claims that “$67 million worth of art, including a previously unheralded painting by the French impressionist Paul Cezanne, worth $50 million, were stolen from his studio in the tiny town of Limpinwood. “Reports of the theft and in particular the Cezanne, supposedly painted in 1873 and titled Cezanne’s Son in a High Chair, were greeted with scepticism in the higher echelons of the Australian art world. The art historian and publisher Lou Klepac described it as like ‘finding a crocodile in the Antarctic’.”