Rampant cancellations, aging or blown-out voices, injured or unprepared conductors … In an open letter to Met management, one twenty-something subscriber says he’s sick of not getting what he signed up for a year in advance and will henceforth buy tickets only last-minute. Is he justified? La Cieca’s cher public hashes out the question.
Tag: 04.06.10
The Disappearing ‘Gayborhood’: A Straight Man’s Lament
“There’s something funny and joyful about a place where people don’t pretend that the real world is anything all that important, where cleverness, artistry and merriment is applauded. It’s not that you can’t join the club if you’re not gay; you can’t join the club if you’re not funny.”
Is There Such A Thing As Free Will? (Maybe Not, But Don’t Tell Anybody)
Are individual humans really autonomous actors making (more-or-less) deliberate choices? Or are those choices merely links in causal chains that couldn’t have come out otherwise? Are we free agents or just bunches of neurons and electrical signals? Many scientists tend to think the latter, but worry that telling the public would encourage or excuse anti-social behavior.
In The Met’s Family Circle, Smoke Gets In Their Eyes
“In the second act, as Simon Keenlyside’s Hamlet was singing about clouds, the [upper reaches of the] Metropolitan Opera House began to fill with smoke.” A few audience members beat a retreat (“Cowards,” sneered one die-hard fan), but the performers kept right on going.
On The Ground, Painting The War In Afghanistan
“[I]n the era of blanket photographic and video coverage of the wars which Western powers are involved in, why are war artists still needed?”
Staatsoper To Inhabit Temporary Digs During Renovation
Music director Daniel “Barenboim said he would compensate by working even harder and trying to lure the opera’s fans across the city’s former Cold War divide. ‘Moving for three years can be seen as a calamity or as a challenge, and we have decided to see it as the latter,’ Barenboim said at a news conference.”
Stars To Fete LA County High School For The Arts
Headlining the 25th-anniversary celebration at the Ahmanson Theatre is Barry Manilow, “one of the earliest supporters of L.A.’s answer to the kind of arts high school chronicled in the film and television series ‘Fame.'” The event is intended “to boost the private fundraising [the public school] counts on even in the best of times.”
Working For Sausages (Or: Theatre Is A Dog’s Life)
“Dogs with an aversion to thunder or fireworks are unlikely to suit the acting life, with its occupational hazards of loud music, bright lights and applause.” Nonetheless, “almost any animal can be taught new tricks with the ‘click-and-treat’ approach….”
Actor And Activist Corin Redgrave Dies At 70
“Although he was primarily known in the media as an old-time Leftie – he and Vanessa were active members of the Workers’ Revolutionary party in the 1970s – he was, first and foremost, an award-winning actor, as befits a member of the legendary Redgrave dynasty.”
Book Reviewing En Famille
“The book-review blog is a family affair. All four Lateiners — Dave, 33; Mara, 34; Lauryn, 11; and Sami, 9 — contribute. … ‘We figured it would motivate the kids to read more,’ said Ms. Lateiner, a stay-at-home mother and a former preschool teacher. ‘Now the blog has turned into the family’s hobby.'”