The forward-thinking Dia Foundation plans to move from its current two spaces to a new location a few blocks north. The new neighborhood is primed to be New York’s next hot location, at the entrance of a new park. “Plans call for possibly demolishing the existing structure, an old meatpacking facility now in disrepair, and building a simple two-story museum with 45,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors.”
Tag: 05.09.05
A Stark Memorial Stands In Berlin
Berlin’s new “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by Peter Eisenman, is the apotheosis of soul-searching. A vast grid of 2,711 concrete pillars whose jostling forms seem to be sinking into the earth, it is able to convey the scope of the Holocaust’s horrors without stooping to sentimentality – showing how abstraction can be the most powerful tool for conveying the complexities of human emotion.”
Could Strike Cripple Montreal Symphony?
“The musicians of l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal are on the picket line. Management insists, puzzlingly, that the strike “in no way changes the OSM’s reality.” Eighteen months of nearly static negotiations have produced a poisonous atmosphere. Players and management are united only in their belief that the other side doesn’t have a clue about what a symphony orchestra really needs.”
Toni Morrison/Richard Danielpour Opera Gets Debut In Detroit
“Here is “Margaret Garner” at its best: the sprawling calamity of slavery telescoped into an intimately scaled portrait of love underscored by Danielpour’s melting lyricism and placed within the spare set designed by Marjorie Bradley Kellogg. The burden of such a broad and bewildering historical canvas as slavery sometimes overwhelms Danielpour and Morrison, but these shortcomings are redeemed by ruminative expressions of a mother’s love and heartfelt song.”
“Garner” Wows The Crowd
“Margaret Garner is a largely old-fashioned opera that nevertheless works. It works primarily because of the emotional resonances of Toni Morrison’s story. It also works because the opera has been handsomely produced, with a strong cast, directed on stage by Kenny Leon and headed by that splendid mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves in the title role.”
An Honorable Achievement, But…
“Margaret Garner turns out to be an honorable achievement, if one that is often reluctant to seize the story’s tragic elements by the neck and render them shocking. Danielpour’s relentlessly lyrical score, though marked by episodes of limpid beauty, lacks dramatic momentum and contrast, with long, lethargic stretches that stop the opera in its tracks. Morrison may be a stranger to the medium, but she is familiar with the story on which she has weaved operatic variations.”