David McVicar, in town to rehearse a new staging of Don Giovanni: “I think they thought about the outside before they thought about the inside. The problems of the Joan Sutherland [Opera Theatre] are extreme. It’s a very quirky space, it is inadequate for opera, it just simply is.”
Tag: 07.10.14
Larry McMurtry On Downsizing His Bookstore, His Favorite Books, And The Biggest Threat To Bookstores Today
“The worst: crazies, meth-heads. Anyone can walk into our bookstore in the age of meth — it’s a constant worry.”
So When Cardinal Wolsey And Henry VIII Fell Out, These Angels Got Lost – And Now The V&A Really Wants Them For Britain
“It is rather extraordinary that the four angels should turn up. Having these angels associated with two of the most famous names of English history, never mind 16th-century English history, is really rather astonishing.”
What (Musical) Kids Compose Over The Summer, And Why
“This is a piece that reflects the life of a G, F, or A type star. This pulls together two major interests of mine: astronomy and composition. This piece is for a middle-sized orchestra with the addition of saxophones, but a few future projects I had in mind would be smaller chamber works. Specifically, I wanted to write a piece about the western United States.”
How Dolly Parton – And Dollywood – *Are* America
“Parton’s skill at being many things to many people accounts for the diversity of her fan base, capacious enough to hold drag queens and the sorts of hard-core emotional supplicants depicted in the documentary For the Love of Dolly, as well as the more mainstream country fans who surrounded us at her parade, which kept going long after Parton had fled the scene.”
Scientists Are Trying To Build A Model Of The Human Brain. Here’s Why That Might Not Be Very Smart
“Models and imaging provide the veneer of precision; they appear to be objective, quantifiable measures of the brain. Pictures of brain activity: You can’t get more scientific than that! We just look at where the brain lights up, and that tells us … what, exactly? And that’s the problem.”
Why ’78 Records Aren’t Like Any Other Recording
“The way that 78s are nothing like LPs has to do with the music recorded on them. 78s are often the only remaining example of a recorded song. Since metal masters were usually not made of 78 recordings, as Petrusich puts it, “if the records themselves break, or are crammed into a flood-prone basement, or tossed into a dumpster, then that particular song is gone, forever.” It took a couple of chapters to really sink in for me. But think about that for a second: There are amazing songs out there that no one living today has ever heard, or will ever hear.”
Why Are Popular Songs More Or Less The Same Length?
“Since 1990, it seems that the average song length has sort of stabilized around 250 seconds (over 4 minutes). Maybe that’s because humans prefer 4 minute songs. Clearly there is no technological limit to song length anymore, right? So, did new technologies influence song length?”
We Could Honor Artists By Selling Detroit’s Art?
“A good deal of the outrage directed at the idea of selling off art from Detroit’s museum is a backlash against the vague idea that doing so would mean rejecting art as a whole, or would amount to a declaration that the residents of Detroit do not deserve to enjoy art. On the contrary. I can think of no higher expression of Van Gogh’s artistic worth than the fact that Detroit could—with the sale of a single one of his paintings—provide water to all of its citizens.”
Is Naming a Luxury Hotel After Him The Best Way To Honor One Of Italy’s Legendary Marxists?
“Enraged by a report that, as well as occupying Gramsci’s old home in Piazza Carlina, the hotel would bear his name, the academics, historians and architects have mobilised against the plan.”