While many mid-size American cities struggle to field an opera company, Denver boasts two – Central City Opera and Opera Colorado. “The two companies are also strikingly similar. They have nearly parallel 2007 budgets – $5.4 million for Central City and $5 million for Opera Colorado. Both enjoy solid national reputations. But along with those commonalities come significant differences, none more obvious than their principal venues.”
Tag: 03.25.07
How The Bay Area’s CD Stores Survive
With the departure of Tower Records, independent recording retailers are what’s left. Is there still a business left for the littl silver discs?
Seattle CD Retailer, Sensing Opportunity, Expands
“You can’t pick up a newspaper without reading about the impending demise of the CD. Yet, just two months ago, without much fanfare, Silver Platters expanded into the deserted shell of the old Tower Records, at the southeast foot of Queen Anne Hill. Other CD stores like Easy Street are doing fine in Seattle, but none has been so daring as to take on an additional 42,000 square feet of retail space. Does this spunky little business know something no one else knows — again?”
End-Of-World Fiction Booming
“Long the province of the paranoid left and Christian right, apocalypse has moved indoors, and it’s going highbrow. Literary novels with end-of-the-world settings are surging at the same time as serious filmmakers engage a subject most often left to B movies.”
Denver’s Dearth Of Dance (Alas)
Marc Shulgold despairs of Denver’s dance scene. Or the lack of it. “After 20 years of covering the region’s rich and varied dance scene, I’ve watched every ballet and modern troupe labor to attract an audience, often with indifferent results. Despite the welcome revenue from the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, lack of money has remained the biggest roadblock.”
The Vast Underground Musician Network
There is a “vast underground world of amateur chamber music, whose members meet through friends, at parties and seminars, in community orchestras and on the Internet to share a common passion and a unique social network. Some have switched careers after a disappointing job hunt as pros, while others dust off old instruments as a hobby. But many plan on music as a satisfying avocation from the start — viewing their musical interests as a way to provide balance to demanding if often lucrative professions.”
Hey, That’s Norm! (Serious Plays, Famous Faces)
Want to tour a play? You need famous actors, preferably famous actors from TV. “It’s the nature of the business — especially if you are going to tour a play. You want to have recognizable people, because plays don’t tour much anymore; it’s all musicals now. There used to be plays on the road all the time, and not just light plays — serious stuff.”
Milwaukee Ballet Hosts Internationl Competition
The Milwaukee Ballet is holding its second Genesis International Choreographic Competition. “Former artistic director Simon Dow held the first Genesis Competition in 2002. Michael Pink, the current A.D., revived it this year and intends to make Genesis a biennial event for the Milwaukee Ballet.”
Hemingway Lives On In Cuba
The only home Ernest Hemingway ever owned outright was in Havana. “The government of Cuba refuses to let ‘Papa’s’ presence on the island die. After appropriating the property in 1961, it continues to promote Hemingway as a cultural icon, casting him as a mythical figure on a level just below Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.”
Restaurant Bloggers Become A Force
“If you think restaurant critics from mainstream newspapers, television and magazines are tough on the food industry, you haven’t spent much time in cyberspace. Online message boards, gossip columns, city restaurant guides and food blogs are proliferating and having a profound influence on where consumers spend their eating dollars. The once-genteel discipline of restaurant reviewing has turned into a free-for-all, celebrated by some as a new-world democracy but seen by others as populist tyranny.”