“Some of her famously quarrelsome relatives doubtless regard Katharina Wagner as little more than an inexperienced blonde harpy luring the Wagner family honour on to the rocks. But this week the great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner took a decisive step in the battle to take control of the composer’s most prestigious legacy: Germany’s Bayreuth Festival. When the tantrums and walk-outs started, it was the 26-year-old Madonna fan who saved the day.”
Tag: 07.11.04
Ditch Those Hard-To-Play Instruments
“Scientists are developing ways of capturing human movement in three dimensions which would allow music to be created with the gesture of an arm. It would eliminate the need for music technicians to twiddle hundreds of knobs to achieve the perfect sound. The technique could also be used for scrolling a webpage, especially useful for people with limited mobility.”
Critic: Clear Channel’s “Art” Vision Should Give Museums Pause
Media giant Clear Channel is now in the museum exhibition business. But at least one critic has big reservations. “Nowhere in the promotional words from the corporation do we see the word ‘art’ or the phrase ‘high-quality art exhibition.’ The promotional phrases are all about size and scale. This should give any art museum pause. If “Saint Peter and the Vatican” is a harbinger of Clear Channel shows to come, it should give art museums further pause. There are a smattering of marvelous things in the show. For example, there’s a small Bernini sculpture that should wow anyone who loves sculpture. But the presentation is way too heavy on gold, silver and bejeweled artifacts and too light on paintings and sculptures.
Why The Miami Quartet Left Florida
Why did the well-regarded Miami String Quartet give up its Florida residency to move to become quartet-in-residence at Kent State? There are various stories. But one thing is clear, writes Laurence Johnson: “Though a much less public affair than the bankruptcy of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, the loss of the Miami String Quartet is a comparable blow to the local music scene.”
What’s Happened To The Joffrey?
The Joffrey Ballet returned to New York last week to participate in the Ashton celebration. “In the old days,” writes Tobi Tobias, “even when you weren’t feeling much admiration for it, you often still felt affection for the engaging personalities of its dancers and the troupe’s overall feisty spirit. My own happy acquaintance with several Ashton ballets comes solely from their Joffrey Ballet productions. Looking at Les Patineurs, A Wedding Bouquet, and Monotones I and II this past week I could only wonder, What happened? Not one of the stagings was as good as it should be—and had been.”
Ingmar Bergman In The 21st Century
Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman doesn’t have the cachet he once had. “It is perhaps frivolous to speak of a great artist ‘falling from fashion.’ But many of the values that are so highly prized in artworks of the early 21st century — irony, multiculturalism, a certain breeziness of affect — are quite different from those that Bergman offers. He is an unapologetically “high culture” European modernist, from a very specific time and place, one deeply influenced by the Lutheran faith (which he abandoned but not without a struggle), by psychoanalysis and existentialism, and by the dreamlike chamber plays of his great countryman August Strindberg. To this heritage, he has added his own filmic innovations, his own anxieties and obsessions, and a matchless linear intensity.”
No Mystery Here – Uncompromising Filmmakers Make Hits
AO Scott ponders the phenomena of Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11’s success at the box office. “It was clear long before anyone had seen a frame of either “Passion” or “Fahrenheit” that what audiences would witness was the uncompromised, unfiltered vision of a strong-willed, stubborn and bloody-minded director. Is it too idealistic of me to think that this freedom from compromise is part of what attracted audiences? Perhaps more than ever before, the movie studios are ruled by timidity, anxiously tailoring their releases to avoid giving offense. Yes, they sometimes engage in the mock-provocations of sex and brutality, but these tepid buttons are pushed much less forcefully than they were 30 years ago. For the most part, movies, intent on maintaining an illusion of consensus, tread cautiously around the thornier thickets of our civic life.”
Can Cleveland Theater Bloom Anew?
The Cleveland Play House has fallen on hard times both artistic and financial in recent years, but the arrival of new artistic director Michael Bloom seems to be generating real excitement for the future of theater in the city. Bloom talks less about reinvigorating the Play House as he does about reinvigorating the city, with theater as a focal point. “There has been what I would call a ‘standard repertory vision’ that just kind of assumes people are going to know why you are doing a play. You can’t assume that.”
Should The West End Be More Like Broadway, Or Less?
London’s West End is in trouble, and the debate is on concerning the best direction to take London’s theater district. Should the West End be imitating Broadway, where producers “take risks and maintain a buzz”? And should such buzz be more important than maintaining some gauzy image of theatrical integrity, especially if going Broadway puts rears in the seats? “What London needs is a stonking great hit.”
Bickering Radicals Choose A Leader
“For most of its 33 years, Pilobolus Dance Theater has styled itself as a radical democracy, with four artistic directors making decisions in concert. But like so many utopian societies, this experimental collective based here in the bucolic hills of Litchfield County has struggled to live up to its ideals. Friction between the directors — Robby Barnett, Alison Chase, Michael Tracy and Jonathan Wolken — has pushed the troupe to the verge of disbanding in recent years… Enter Itamar Kubovy, an energetic theater director with a knack for tempering backstage rivalries.”