Little more than a month after the New Hampshire Symphony announced that it was canceling the remainder of its season, Opera New Hampshire is canceling its lone spring production, citing “lower than anticipated funding from subscriptions, ticket sales, sponsorships and other sources.”
Tag: 04.01.07
Is Melbourne The New Design Capital?
“The exhaustive Melbourne Design Guide is just one of many signs that this city’s global reputation as a cutting-edge design capital is swiftly in the ascendant. In architecture, graphics, industrial design, interiors, street art, craft, fashion and furniture, Melbourne is making its mark without apology.”
Today’s Classics Tomorrow (Or The Other Way Around?)
“About a decade ago, the auction houses had a eureka moment and realised if they put the same resources behind new art as they put behind old masters, they would have a supply of goodies that was effectively bottomless. Unlike old masters or impressionists, the supply of contemporary art can never dry up.” But which art will be considered classics tomorrow?
Cleveland Museum Steers Through Change
Timothy Rubb has been director of the Cleveland Museum for a year. “He took over the Cleveland museum — regarded widely as one of the finest in nation — at an incredibly complex moment.” This is a museum at the crossroads, and Rubb is a careful driver.
VHS, R.I.P.
“The demise of VHS, age 30, became official with the major studios’ recent announcement that they’ve stopped releasing movies on videocassette. The lone exceptions: kids’ flicks featuring the likes of Barney.”
Philip Roth Wins Bellow Prize
Philip Roth has won the first ever PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, a $40,000 prize named for the late Nobel laureate and one of Roth’s closest friends and literary heroes.
For A More Poetic Boston?
There’s a proposal to name a poet laureate for Boston. But “some have derided the notion that a city of crumbling infrastructure might trouble itself to subsidize poetry. The most surprising naysayers, perhaps, were poets themselves.”
The Politics Of Remaking American Cities
“Several social scientists are helping to make sense of the emerging landscape of race and politics in the contemporary American city, where the old social divisions have been reconfigured. Their work reveals that gentrification is still contested and economic development does not end up benefiting everyone, but predicting the winners and losers is getting harder. Minorities may be on the winning side more often than not.”
Opera’s Great Talent Search
The Metropolitan Opera National auditions are the opera world’s largest talent search. “Theoretically the judges are not looking for finished products. A stated purpose of the auditions is to identify the singers with the greatest potential for a career, rather than those who are most polished and professional. But a singer who seems a diamond in the rough to one listener may sound just plain bad to another.”
American Touring Theatre Colossus Divests
“Live Nation’s ‘theatrical business assets’ have changed names more often than P. Diddy. They started 25 years ago as a division of a pioneering company called Pace Management, which was bought in 1997 by an aggressively acquisitive company called SFX Entertainment, which was in turn bought by the colossal public company Clear Channel, which then spun off all its live entertainment business as Live Nation, also a public company. What that company grew into over those 25 years — and what is now on the auction block — includes the country’s largest subscription series for touring theatrical performances…”