“During his tenure, the Met mounted 4 world premieres, 22 house premieres and 47 new productions, a record not seen since the tenure of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, from 1908 to 1935. The endowment tripled to about $300 million. The house installed titles. Customer care — including automated ticket sales and easier ticket exchanges — improved, he said. Labor peace was maintained, with contracts often settled ahead of schedule. The Met was widely seen as an extremely well-run house. But one thing Mr. Volpe could not achieve was halting an overall decline in ticket revenues…”
Tag: 04.30.06
Does Your Movie Theatre Have A Future?
“People don’t seem to gather (in public) as often as they did 50 years ago. I think that’s a gradual thing that’s been happening since World War II. But amusements at home — the web, DVDs, satellite television, video on demand — must be outdone as an experience, via comfy chairs, friendly staff and top-notch presentation.”
DVDs Over Theatres? Why Not?
“Today, screenings in a theatrical setting are merely one part of the commercial life of a studio release. As DVD sales figures testify, people are twice as likely to see a movie on disc than in a theatre. And why not? When one factors in the ticket cost of seeing a first-run movie, the divisive nature for many of the multiplex experience (which older patrons, in particular, can find noisy and uninviting), the speed at which movies reappear on DVD, and the number of alternative viewing options (DVD players, computers, TiVo, iPod, etc.), you can hardly blame people for choosing to pass on the formerly glorious big-screen experience.”
Saatchi’s Free-For-All
Charles Saatchi has launched a new section on his website where artists can post samples of their work. “Saatchi’s website has a healthy readership with a daily online magazine, London gallery listing, reader-contributed essays and discussion forums devoted to debates over issues such ‘what is bad taste in art’?”
Pitched By Pitchfork
The indie band website Pitchfork has become a major force in the promotion of alternative music. “Pitchfork has achieved a sort of mythical status, like an indie-rock yogi: Readers climb the digital mountaintop to see what wisdom (and written weirdness) its team of freelance writers might dispense about this off-the-radar band or that one, and then they act accordingly…”
Broadway On TV… (Tradition Revived?)
“Musical theater was once a staple of television. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ regularly featured performances from the latest Broadway shows, allowing people who had little prospect of seeing the productions to get at least a taste of them. In the mid-’50s, when Mary Martin brought “Peter Pan” to NBC, it was a national event — one that the network repeated regularly for years. Televised productions of such musicals as “Wonderful Town,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “One Touch of Venus,” “Brigadoon” and “Kiss Me, Kate,” among others, also were presented during that era. Where did it all go?”
Tavis Smiley Presses His Case For Public Radio Diversity
“For many years, public radio executives have studied the makeup of their audience and concluded that its single most defining characteristic is college education. Consultants advising programmers on how to shape their stations blame the audience’s lack of racial diversity on ‘longstanding educational inequities.’ Whatever the cause of the divide, more and more public stations are trying to broaden their mix of listeners.”
Indonesian Writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, 81
“Pramoedya is best known for his ‘Buru Quartet’ series retracing the rise of Indonesian nationalism in the first decades of the 20th century, a version differed from that of the government at the time. Hailed by many international critics as Indonesia’s leading modern novelist, his work has been translated into 30 languages.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, 97
Mr. Galbraith was one of the most widely read authors in the history of economics; among his 33 books was “The Affluent Society” (1958), one of those rare works that forces a nation to re-examine its values. He wrote fluidly, even on complex topics, and many of his compelling phrases — among them “the affluent society,” “conventional wisdom” and “countervailing power” — became part of the language.
A Glasgow Favorite Emerges As A New Model For Museums
Glasgow’s much loved Kelvingrove gets a radical makeover. And does it work? “It’s as full-on educational as I have ever seen in a museum. A Victorian painting is shown in various stages of cleaning. There are panels explaining pentimenti and underpainting, why paintings look the way they do, all using actual objects from the collection. My initial reaction is that this is quite a lot to take in, but it is a good way to start people off on art appreciation, and most importantly it captures the imagination and makes you want to see the works in the following rooms, probably now in a new light.”