“The British Museum has said that is loaning works to UK museums at an unprecedented level to help them weather waters that are likely to be choppy for at least five years.”
Tag: 07.04.12
The Deepest Problem With Britten’s Billy Budd: The Closet
Zachary Woolfe: “Billy Budd is a product of the gay closet. It is an opera composed by a closeted gay man, to a libretto written by Forster, a closeted gay man, based on a novella by a man who scholars often suggest was closeted and that revolves around the attractions of men to other men. … [The opera] reveal[s] a great truth about the closet: It’s boring to watch. Like any magic realm with its languages and codes, it is wholly engrossing only when you’re inside it.”
Can We Please Tone Down – Or Tear Down – The Sets For Our Shakespeare?
“I don’t want to knock stage designers; when they get it right, their work can be genuinely transformative and brilliant. But I don’t like it when they jump up and down behind the arras like Polonius in Hamlet, trying to distract my attention from the poor old actors.”