Pacific Operaworks, founded by lutenist Stephen Stubbs and dedicated to small-scale Baroque and contemporary works, makes its debut this week with the well-regarded (and well-traveled) William Kentridge/Handspring Puppet Co. staging of Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses. The critics are impressed.
Tag: 03.13.09
No Farewell Tour For Plácido Domingo
“[He] cannot see himself retiring the way many opera stars do: by announcing a farewell tour and going from company to company, accepting tributes. ‘Rather,’ he said… ‘I think it will be one evening, after a performance, to say, That’s it.'” The tenor says he considered doing just that after the final performance of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor.
Major Staff Cuts At Met Museum
The MMA revealed “that it would lay off more than a quarter of its merchandising staff, eliminating 74 jobs in addition to 53 already cut over the last year. It also warned that the worsening economy would most likely force it to shrink its overall work force by 10 percent – as many as 250 full- and part-time jobs in all – before the summer, including some in curatorial and other pivotal departments.”
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Decides Not To Sell Trade Division
The CEO of HMH’s corporate parent said that the four unsolicited offers received “weren’t giving us the kind of value we could deliver in the foreseeable future by growing the business ourselves.” The division “publishes consumer books from Curious George to Phillip Roth novels to the Peterson Field Guides to birds.”
Revamped, Israel’s Batsheva Harnesses Its Essential Energy
“Since its first tour of the United States in 1970, Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company has won over American crowds and critics alike with its energetic approach to dance. At the time, it was, perhaps, a novelty: an Israeli group performing primarily American repertory with unbridled verve and vigor. But in the past 18 years, the company has become a phenomenon of a different sort.”