One day after she was quoted in the New York Times saying that Metropolitan Opera director Peter Gelb was “phasing her out,” soprano Ruth Ann Swenson received a warm ovation from the Met crowd attending her performance in a Handel opera. “But if she looked at the back of the orchestra, Swenson might have seen a possible cause for the Met’s reduced commitment: several rows of mostly empty seats. She doesn’t have a big recording company advertising her heavily, and other sopranos are better box office.”
Tag: 04.08.07
Sydney Opera House Due For A Rebuild?
The architect behind the Sydney Opera House has proposed an extensive gutting and rebuilding of the interior of the facility, which has been plagued by acoustical issues and space problems since it opened forty years ago. “At the moment there is so little space in the wings that ballerinas coming off stage have to have someone to catch them so they don’t hit the concrete walls. Some members of the orchestra are sitting up to 12 metres under the stage… The Utzon solution involves dropping the theatre floor into the offices and utility rooms, and cutting space into the surrounding sandstone, allowing the backstage area to be enlarged and sound quality improved.”
Import Restrictions Loom For Art, Artifacts
The U.S. State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee “has been the focus of fierce battles between archaeologists, who say the art market fosters the looting of historic sites, and dealers, who say that broad import restrictions threaten collecting by private individuals and museums in the United States.” The debate has taken on a particularly desperate air lately, as rumors swirl that the committee may decide to acquiesce to a Chinese request to ban the import of Chinese antiquities.