“Since the dawn of European music, Italy has been its chief wellspring of melody and imagination. Johann Sebastian Bach learned his craft copying out concertos by Vivaldi and claiming them as his own. Mozart wrote his operas to Italian texts by Varesco, Calzabigi and da Ponte. But the recent death of Luciano Berio leaves Italy without a single composer of world renown – indeed, without one composer whose name might elicit a flicker of ragazzi recognition in any town piazza from Milan to Palermo. Italy has become overnight a land without music, a calamity of uncalculated cultural magnitude.”
Tag: 06.11.03
Scaling Back A PAC In KC
Changes may be on the way for the design of the new Performing Arts Center in Kansas City, with funding concerns creating a need for a less extravagant complex. “The exterior of Moshe Safdie’s glass-and-concrete center would not change appreciably. But the new interior design… includes a large opera-ballet theater that can be transformed into an orchestra hall using technology developed since discussions about the performing arts center began in 1995. A 500-seat theater/recital hall would cater to smaller arts organizations and community theater. The existing plan… called for a 2,200-seat theater and an 1,800-seat devoted orchestra hall, with the smaller hall proposed for a future second phase.”
Sore Tushes And Broken Contracts
“The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has sued the contractors that installed seats last year which were later removed because they were defective and uncomfortable. The lawsuit seeks at least $1.6 million because, the orchestra claims, Modern Door and Equipment Sales and its subcontractor, American Premier Seating, failed to fulfill their contract to install 1,800 seats, putting in only 500.”
Refusing To Quit In South Florida
When the Florida Philharmonic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, most of its board members, musicians, and managers threw up their hands, passed the buck to each other, and mourned the demise of the region’s only large orchestra. But two members of the Philharmonic’s chorus are refusing to let the Florida Phil slip away, and have raised $900,000 in an effort to get the organization back into workable fiscal shape. Support for the effort has been slow to come from musicians worried about their contracts, but the choruspeople now seem to have the organization behind them, and hope to raise $2 million by this Friday.
Can Colorado Arts Council Survive?
Now that the Colorado Arts Council has seen its budget cut to $40,000 and its director fired, can it survive? “The council, a key player in the state arts community for 36 years, is barely hanging on. In order to survive, it must learn to get by with volunteers and donations from new sources. But the council also needs a commitment from [Governor Bill] Owens and other state leaders that they will support it and increase its funding when the economy turns around.”
Rod Stewart, The Musical
If ABBA and Billy Joel can do it, why not Rod Stewart? Why not indeed? Write a musical based on his music, that is. A project based on Stewart tunes is in the workd. “Plot details were sketchy. It apparently chronicles the exploits of ‘a shy young man’ who is tempted by Satan while ‘attempting to win over the love of his life by emulating his hero Rod Stewart’.”
Mariinsky’s Eccentric Design Plans Draw Protests
St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre unveiled architectural proposals for the theatre’s expansion. They weren’t received well. “Such extravagant and eccentric ideas have frayed tempers in a city celebrated for its baroque architecture. The competition caps last month’s lavish 300th birthday of Russia’s cultural capital. The government will pay £66m towards the project, which will link the new building – on the site of the Palace of Culture in Honour of the [Soviet] First Five Year Plan – to the old Mariinsky building (formerly known as the Kirov, and home to the ballet company) via a bridge on the Kryukov canal. The spending is criticised in a region facing poverty and unemployment.”
Rekindling The Art Of Cambodia
“During Pol Pot’s four-year reign of terror, up to 80 per cent of Cambodia’s artists perished in a purge of the intelligentsia more far-reaching than anything wrought by Mao or Stalin. With them went much of the performance repertory of classical theatre and dance, as well as an enormous variety of folkloric arts. But the Khmer Rouge failed to extinguish Khmer culture.” And it has struggled back…
NYer Fiction Issue Is Back
The New Yorker is out with its new special fiction issue. “After a year’s hiatus the ‘Début Fiction’ issue is back, and under Deborah Treisman’s watch it’s a gentler affair. Ms. Treisman has done away with the glammy author photos that were a hallmark of the buzzy Buford era…”
It’s A Date – When Van Gogh Painted
Experts have known that Van Gogh’s painting of a field of haystacks in Provence, France, was painted “sometime in the summer of 1889, toward the end of the most productive, but troubled, period of the artist’s life. However, the precise date of its creation has vexed art historians for many years. Now, Southwest Texas State University astronomers Russell Doescher and Donald Olson, along with Olson’s wife, Marilyn, an English professor, have determined that Van Gogh was working on the picture at 9:08 p.m. on July 13, 1889.”