“The United States government is honoring opera. The National Endowment for the Arts said on Tuesday that it was establishing yearly Opera Honors awards, and named the first four recipients: James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director; the soprano Leontyne Price; the composer Carlisle Floyd; and Richard Gaddes, the general director of the Santa Fe Opera.”
Tag: 05.13.08
A Dull Dud Of A Turner?
“For the first time in many years, the Turner Prize shortlist looks to me like a dud. First, the four shortlisted artists struck me as unusually – and irritatingly – similar.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber Company Doubles Its Profits
“Really Useful Holdings Limited – the parent organisation for Lloyd Webber’s companies including the Really Useful Group, which operates his theatres and owns the copyrights to his musicals – has reported a total operating profit of £21.9 million, thanks in part to strong production income from copyright and rights exploitation as well as strong trading results from the theatres.”
Why Is “Smart” An Insult?
Only in showbiz and politics is “smart” a perceived insult.
Publisher Launches Website For Authors To Submit Unsolicited Work
“No longer will the disgruntled writing masses be able to complain that their work has not been published because it has been vetoed by elite, snobbish publishing industry professionals. Now they will be kyboshing each other. (Or launching each other’s careers.)”
John Steinbeck. Why?
“Why is it that the work of this earnest but artless writer continues to enjoy such astonishing popularity? It’s not hard to understand why his books are widely assigned in middle and high school English classes; they are easy to read, they are honest in their portrayal of working-class Americans, they passionately support basic American values and principles even when they criticize particulars of American life. Whatever their literary shortcomings, they have an integrity to which young readers respond. But why do adults continue to read Steinbeck in such numbers?”
Arts Council England Unveils New Way To Judge Arts Success
“Arts Council England is about to consult on what it believes could be a new model for judging success or failure in the public sector. The problems of the present method of assessing arts companies were exposed last year when the Arts Council cut funding for nearly 200 organisations.”
Study: Reading To Young Children Gives A Power Boost
“Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life. Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills.”
Is Our Wired Info World Making Us Dumber?
“In The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein argues that cultural and technological forces, far from opening up an exciting new world of learning and thinking, have conspired to create a level of public ignorance so high as to threaten our democracy.”
London Has A New High-End Art District
“Fitzrovia is a tucked-away enclave of the West End sandwiched between the bustling retail stores of Oxford Street to the south and the traffic of the Euston Road to the north. For years it has been associated with small-scale fashion wholesalers. Now the rag trade is giving way to the art trade.”