Preservationists Worry About Plans To Open A Theme Park Around Ancient Chinese Caves

“Officials in Gansu Province, which includes Dunhuang, and a company in Beijing have drawn up plans for a theme park connecting the caves with a separate area of sand dunes that already exists as a tourist playground (think dune buggies and camel rides). The connecting strip of desert would be filled with faux temples, folk villages and souvenir stands.”

Opera Grand Rapids Reinvents Itself

Opera Grand Rapids has changed its mission, said executive director Anne Berquist. “It’s a different approach, but it gives a new, fresh look at what opera should be in the 21st century. We’re still going to produce fully staged opera. That’s what we are. But we need to do other things to build our audience.”

Los Angeles Website Asks Theatres To Buy Reviews. A Good Idea?

“Bitter Lemons founder Colin Mitchell says he’s responding to the dwindling number of reviews by professional critics amid upheaval in the media industry. Many traditional outlets have retrenched in the face of falling advertising revenues they’d relied on to fund coverage, including arts reviews. He’s asking theater companies themselves to help fill the void.”

James Joyce Fascinates The Chinese

“These days, if you ask about James Joyce – or ‘Zhanmusi Qiaoyisi’, as his name is transliterated in Chinese pinyin – in a Chinese bookshop you will be led to shelves lined with relevant volumes. The vast five-floor Xinhua bookshop on Wangfujing, a crowded shopping avenue just round the corner from Tiananmen Square, currently stocks no fewer than four different editions of Ulysses.”

Using Oral Histories To Write For Justice

Mimi Lok: “If you only see someone as a case study then it normally hones in on that instance or instances of where they had their human rights violated. It’s reducing that person to that moment of injustice. You are reducing that person’s whole experience. We want to do the opposite.”

Legendary Conductor Manager Ronald Wilford, 87

“By managing many of the leading maestros of his era — over the years his clients included Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur and Colin Davis — Mr. Wilford was able to wield enormous influence in many of the world’s top concert halls and opera houses, often simultaneously, for decades.”