Tag: 03.20.19

The Woman Who Single-Handedly Created An Indian Style Of Opera Constructed On Indian Classical Music

Shanno Khurana first became a star performing in Punjabi folk operas in 1950s Delhi, but she was a fully classically trained singer who wanted to do serious classical work. So she devised and composed fully through-sung music-dramas based strictly on classical ragas and following their rules, and she toured her operas all over India right through the 1970s. (She’s still alive today, and still occasionally concertizing at age 91.) – Scroll (India)

The 25 Years And Seven Serious Tries It Took Terry Gilliam To Make His Don Quixote Film

There were the NATO jets overflying the filming location. The prostate infection that took out the lead actor. The woman who claimed she could get financing from the deposed president of Tunisia. Another lead actor who died just before filming was to start. The Portuguese producer who rescued the project and then sued to kill it. Bilge Ebiri talks with the director about the very long, very strange journey. – New York Magazine

First Study: Demographics of Artists Represented In American Museums

Seriously – are we surprised? A first-of-its-kind study analyzes the race and gender of the artists represented in the permanent collections of 18 major American art museums, and finds that three-quarters of them are white men. Women represent only 12.6 percent of this elite group, and African-Americans of any gender only 1.2 percent. – Pacific Standard

Fistfight At The Opera: Lawyer Punches Designer In Dispute Over Seats At Covent Garden

“Matthew Feargrieve, 42, was accused at Westminster Magistrates Court of repeatedly punching Ulrich Engler on the shoulder in the performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the world-famous [Royal Opera House]. It is understood the dispute began because Mr Engler allegedly grabbed a coat belonging to Mr Feargrieve’s wife from an empty seat and threw it on her lap.” – The Telegraph (UK)

Finally, An Online Space Where Black Artists In UK Can Find Each Other

“Make Online has been created by [Talawa] Theatre Company for artists across the UK, and is described as an online community that will give black British artists ‘ownership and agency of their careers’. It is available for black artists at all stages of their careers to develop networks with their peers and the wider industry through open discussions and event listings, as well as access job postings, commissions and castings.” – The Stage

When Gustav Mahler Rode The New York Subways

Oh yes, he traveled by subway during his years (1908-11) as director of the New York Philharmonic. (He’d have taken one of the BMT lines to conduct at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the now-gone Ninth Avenue El to get home on the Upper West Side.) “Yet claiming Mahler as a New Yorker … is complicated,” writes David Patrick Stearns. “Connect the dots one way, New York was Mahler’s nightmare and possibly his undoing. Connect the dots another way, and Mahler himself was a nightmare no matter where he was.” – WQXR (New York City)