“The American soprano was in recital at the Utzon Room [at the Sydney Opera House] and in concert with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra next week, but a hip operation has forced her to withdraw.”
Tag: 06.19.12
From The Puppeteers Who Brought You War Horse – Crows!
Handspring Puppet Company, which created the equine puppets which have drawn raves on Broadway and the West End, “is taking on Crow, [Ted] Hughes’s signature sequence of poems from 1970, set in the natural world that was his creative habitat.”
Moscow’s Shukov Radio Tower, Constructivist Landmark, Desperately Needs Restoration
The structure “is in dire condition and may be lost if it is not properly restored soon, according to Vladimir Shukhov, the great-grandson of [its] engineer and architect … The 90-year-old tower is regarded as an architectural masterpiece of the Russian avant-garde and has influenced contemporary architects including Norman Foster.”
Britain’s Museum Of The Year Is … Tucked Away Deep In The West Country
“The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, a classic Victorian regional museum reinvented through a major redevelopment project and described as “quite simply a magical place”, has been proclaimed museum of the year, winning the £100,000 Art Fund prize.”
Need To Replenish Your Willpower? Think Of Filthy Lucre
“One school of thought in psychology holds that self-control is like a muscle: When you’re trying to abstain from, say, alcohol, you expend mental energy, just as if you were lifting weights. … A new study suggests a simpler way to bolster self-control, as it begins to flag: Think of money.”
Chris Ofili Designs For The Royal Ballet
“[He] comes with a seemingly gold-plated reputation: 1998 Turner prize winner, British representative at the 50th Venice Biennale, paintings held in some of the world’s great collections.” (In the US, he’s mostly remembered for his painting The Holy Virgin Mary, which incorporated elephant dung and photos of genitalia and over which Rudy Giuliani threatened to shut down the Brooklyn Museum.) “But two years ago, when [Ofili] agreed to design a new production for the Royal Ballet, he suffered a flash of paranoia.”
J-Pop, Whose Weirdness Is Now An International Selling Point
“For more than two decades, Western media has highlighted and laughed at Japanese ‘strange’ phenomena, from Gothic Lolita fashion and pre-Tupac hologram pop stars to more deviant subjects.” Now, stars like Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (whose videos feature things like floating slices of bread with eyeballs) are cashing in on foreigners’ bemused curiosity.
Even Strads And Guarneris Are Emigrating To Australia
The Australian String Quartet now has a set of Guadagninis; three Australian Chamber Orchestras principals now play a Stradivari, a Guarneri and a Guadagnini; the Sydney Symphony has begun a mini-shopping spree from older Italian string instruments.
Edward Albee Shows How To Thoroughly Alienate A Translator
Once Barcelona translator Joan Sellent had completed his translation of A Delicate Balance into Catalan, he received from Albee’s agent “a five-column grid, which was to be filled in with ‘any deviation from the exact English words and the explanation why this couldn’t be directly translated into Spanish [sic], and why the words that were chosen were used’.”
Twitter Queen Signed To Big Hollywood Writing Contracts
“Her success points to an appetite for humor from a female point of view. But unlike stars such as Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig, who honed their craft in the”Saturday Night Live” writers’ room, Oxford found and shaped her comedic voice in online chat rooms and blogs and on Twitter.”