Tag: 03.30.06

British Dealer Drawn Into True/Hecht Trial

“The activities of Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer who has done business with many of the world’s top collectors, came into sharp focus on Wednesday at the trial of Marion True, a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Robert Hecht, an American dealer.” Specifically, prosecutors are bringing to light details of “Mr. Symes’s elaborate use of offshore companies and warehouses to buy and sell ancient artworks. Italians contend that some of these works were illegally excavated and exported.”

Schenk’s Last New York Stand

The opera director Otto Schenk, 76, says that his current production of Don Pasquale will be the last work he does for New York’s Metropolitan Opera – in fact, it took some prodding from the Met’s Joseph Volpe and the presence of legendary Anna Netrebko to coax Schenk out of his semi-retirement at all. “He is a link to an earlier, even a prewar tradition of German-language theater, down to the earthy dry humor that harks back to cabaret traditions of the 1920’s.”

Will Direct-To-DVD Kill The Big Screen?

Hollywood is all abuzz over the latest notion in consumer marketing – bringing a movie to DVD while it’s still available in theatres, and sometimes even launching the two simultaneously. But while consumers may cheer the idea, there’s one significant group of players in the movie biz who couldn’t be more against it: theatre owners. They believe that simultaneous DVD release will cripple their business, and they’re using all their clout to nip the idea in the bud.

Will Gamer Music Be The New Orchestral Pops?

Video games have become such a huge part of the entertainment sphere that there are currently two competing international touring shows in which live professional orchestras perform the scores from such hits as Donkey Kong and Myst. Interest is so high in the shows that some in the music industry are beginning to wonder if such programs might be more than a one-time gimmick, and might represent the evolution of the “pops” program. As if to demonstrate the versatility of the form, one of the two tours focuses most of the attention on the music being played, while in the other, the orchestra is in the background while scenes from the games play out on a giant screen.

First “Complete” Shakespeare Folio To Be Sold

“A rare book of Shakespeare’s plays, considered to be one of the most important in British literature, is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London. The complete first folio of the playwright’s work had a print run of approximately 750 in 1623. However, only a third of these survive and most of them are incomplete. The book is being sold by Dr Williams’s Theological Library in London, which hopes the proceeds – expected to be more than £3m – will secure its future.”

$5 Million of Breathing Room In Toronto

The Toronto Symphony, which has struggled to stay solvent in recent years, was significantly buoyed this week by news that it would be receiving a $5 million gift from a single donor – the largest such donation in the TSO’s history. “With a Toronto building spree that includes an opera house, two museum makeovers and two great arts-education institutions, the TSO has been having a rough time wooing donors. After all, it has no building project — just a scarily mounting deficit, currently at $9.5 million.” $4 million of the gift must go to the orchestra’s long-term endowment, but the remaining million can be used to pay down debt.

What If They Built A PAC In Miami And Only Cleveland Came?

“With six months to go before the October grand opening, the Miami Performing Arts Center and the four South Florida arts groups slated to be its principal residents have yet to come to terms over basic issues such as rental fees, terms of payment, box office services and concessions… To date PAC leaders have signed just two licensing agreements: one with Clear Channel Entertainment, the presenters of the Broadway in Miami series, and the other with the Cleveland Orchestra.” No South Florida arts groups have been able to reach agreement with the center on terms of use, although representatives from both the PAC and the groups expected to be anchor tenants say they expect agreements to get done soon.

Baltimore Sym Wipes Out Debt With Huge Endowment Draw

The good news is that the Baltimore Symphony is about to rid itself of all the red ink it accumulated over the last several years. The bad news is that the cost of doing so will be nearly a third of its entire endowment. The move, which is extremely unorthodox, will pay off the BSO’s $16 million accumulated debt all at once, and leave the orchestra with $8 million in cash on hand. The remaining endowment (around $62 million, low for a major American ensemble) will be transferred to a new, independent trust which the BSO hopes will give donors confidence in the organization’s fiscal prudence.

Arts In The Northern Wilderness

The arts (or, at least, large concentrations of artists) are usually considered an urban phenomenon, centered in and around cities and often reflecting in their local vibrance the overall quality of life in the region. But a new study by a Minnesota group shows that one of the state’s highest concentrations of arts and culture is in the mainly rural northeast “arrowhead” region. “Arts organizations bring a lot of outside money into the Arrowhead, according to the study. Nonresidents make up about one-third of the audience for nonprofit arts events in the region, and out-of-towners tend to spend more.”