Tag: 06.23.04

Doing It Old School

There are certain classical musicians who spend their lives attempting to play old music in precisely the way that the original musicians would have played it. So why shouldn’t there be period theater as well? Maybe because we won’t have any hope of understanding the accent…

Is Chicago The New Theater Capital of America?

New York’s theater scene is in an undeniable slump, and Michael Billington thinks that it may be time to acknowledge that America’s best theater is no longer centered in the Big Apple, but on the shores of Lake Michigan. “No fewer than 156 theatre companies, predominantly non-profit, operate in the city. And while New York, with its suffocating commercialism, seems increasingly hidebound, it is to Chicago that the true theatregoer now avidly looks.”

From Beige To Bold

Architecturally speaking, Toronto has always been an exceedingly ‘beige’ city. But with countless cultural organizations planning and executing new cutting-edge buildings, the city is poised to emerge fom the shadow of Montreal and become one of North America’s most architecturally diverse and fascinating metropolises.

Cleveland Museum Looks For $36 Million In Government Help For Building

The Cleveland Museum is asking local and federal governments to contribute $36 million towards a $225 million expansion project. “The expansion and renovation would enlarge the 389,000-square-foot museum complex by nearly 200,000 square feet, and add 31,000 square feet of new gallery space. The museum hopes to complete its design by January and to break ground in March or April. Construction would take four years.”

County Grills Miami PAC Mangers For Cost Overruns

Unhappy Miami-Dade County officials are grilling project managers for the county’s new performing arts center, currently under construction and $67 million over budget and 20 months behind schedule. “It’s a money pit. The report says total costs still aren’t capped. I guarantee they’re going to be back for more money. It’s a 900-pound gorilla, and we’ve got to rein it in.”

Is British Opera Strangling Itself?

With the quick demise of Savoy Opera, the attempted murder of Scottish Opera, and the seemingly endless melodrama at English National Opera, Norman Lebrecht is wondering whether the UK’s opera world realizes the trouble it is in. “A view is forming, not unreasonably, that opera has reached saturation point in Britain, and most congestively in London where Covent Garden and English National Opera compete year round with visiting troupes at Sadlers Wells, the South Bank, the Barbican and the Proms, not to mention an incursion of festivals.”

NYT’s Muschamp – They’re Glad To See Him Go

New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp’s retirement from the architecture beat is “a relief to a new crop of editors unwilling to defend, as their predecessors did, the critic’s iconoclasm and obscurantism, his unapologetic dilettantism and his unabashed socializing within the highest social circles of the creative world he judges in print. It’s a fall from grace that represents the kind of Times-writer morality tale alumni of the paper know all too well. At the height of his career, Mr. Muschamp’s writing was the talk of the New York cultural scene; today, his professional conflicts of interest and very public breakdowns have pushed him to the margins of architectural society.”