With the orchestra’s, and the region’s, economic troubles, the DSO’s new music director says that, if the musicians are to have a 52-week contract, they need some paying listeners year-round. “If there’s no audience, no revenue. … But maybe something can be found. There’s no summer opera festival in the Midwest, for example. Everybody wants to exhaust all possibilities before saying no more summers (of employment).”
Tag: 06.09.09
Canada’s National Arts Centre To Make Steep Job Cuts
“Officials at the National Arts Centre [in Ottawa] said Tuesday they plan to cut up to 40 jobs over the next two years to help prevent the shortfall of several million dollars they expect to have next year.” The positions eliminated add up to about ten percent of the NAC staff.
Shaw Festival Receives C$2.5M Bequest
“Late Toronto philanthropist Mona L. Campbell has left $2.5 million [Can] to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the theatre festival announced Tuesday. … Campbell was chairwoman and chief of Dover Industries, which was Canada’s largest flour-milling company in 2008.”
Pair Of Paintings Found In Toronto Goodwill Bin Sell For C$134,000
“The works by Federico Del Campo, a renowned 19th-century painter of European scenes, are of a sunny Venetian backwater and of a Venetian canal with two ships, both dated 1895.”
Milwaukee’s Marcus Center Inks Sponsorship Deal
“Harris Bank said it has signed a multi-year sponsorship agreement that designates Harris as the ‘Official Bank of the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts’ in downtown Milwaukee. … Financial details of the sponsorship, which was announced Tuesday, were not disclosed.” The complex houses, among others, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Florentine Opera Company and the Milwaukee Ballet.
Philadelphia’s Milanov Picks Up Princeton Gig
“Rossen Milanov, associate conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra and artistic director of The Philadelphia Orchestra at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts, has been named music director and conductor of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, effective July 1. … [He] is also music director of Symphony in C in Camden (formerly the Haddonfield Symphony), one of three professional training orchestras in the United States, and the New Symphony Orchestra in his native city of Sofia, Bulgaria.”
Rosie O’Donnell To Be A Babe In Arms
“Plans are afoot for a Broadway revival of 1937 Rodgers and Hart tuner Babes in Arms to star Rosie O’Donnell. Randy Skinner, recently Tony-nommed as choreographer of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, is attached to helm and choreograph the production, which has a new book by Joe DiPietro (Memphis).”
Oh, The Riffraff That Turns Up At The Ballet These Days
“A Russian oligarch who mysteriously vanished from his Moscow dacha nearly six months ago, and who is wanted by both the Kremlin and Interpol, has been spotted at a gala ballet performance at London’s Covent Garden.”
Antonia Frasier To Pen Memoir Of Her Marriage To Pinter
“After bestselling biographies of Mary Queen of Scots and Marie Antoinette, Antonia Frasier is now turning her professional attentions to her own life, and her marriage to the Nobel prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter, who died on Christmas Eve 2008. Fraser will draw both from her memories and the diaries which she started to keep in October 1968 to write Must You Go? which will be published next January.”
Picasso Sketchbook Stolen In Paris
“A sketchbook of drawings by Pablo Picasso worth about 8m euros ($11m) has been stolen from a museum in Paris, police have said.” The theft from the Musée Picasso was discovered today.