“A year ago, that statement seemed nearly impossible. When the Baltimore Opera filed for bankruptcy in the middle of the 2008-09 season, ending a 58-year tradition, the city seemed destined for a nearly opera-less future. It’s true that there were a couple of small local companies, but nobody imagined that a mere 18 months later Baltimore would have at least seven opera companies, maybe more.”
Tag: 07.11.10
Does Watching Live Theatre On A Movie Screen Work? (You Bet!)
“When the National Theatre unveiled plans to film productions and relay them live by satellite to cinemas in Britain and 21 other countries, I was sceptical. I feared the results would seem excessively stagy and lack the excitement of watching actors in the flesh. How wrong I was.”
St. Louis Loses A Classical Music Radio Station
KFUO-99.1 FM, “Classic99,” went off the air last week. “When the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod sold the station to Gateway Creative Broadcasting’s “Joy FM,” which switched the format to “Christian contemporary” pop music, 14 longtime LCMS employees were laid off.”
The Brainwaves Of Ideas
“Exactly where brainwaves are generated in the brain, and how they communicate information, is something of a mystery. As we begin to answer these questions, surprising functions of these ripples of neural activity are emerging. It turns out they underpin almost everything going on in our minds, including memory, attention and even our intelligence.”
Painting Of A Dead Mandela Draws Controversy
“The painting by local artist Yuill Damaso depicts South Africa’s first black president’s dead body on an operating table, undergoing an autopsy as prominent South African political figures look on. The work, which is on display in an upmarket Johannesburg shopping centre, has drawn outrage from South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC).”
Study: Facts Is Facts (Except It Doesn’t Matter)
“Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite.”
The Feminist Actor (It’s All In The Interpretation)
How do “today’s women of the theatre want to present themselves, particularly in the classics. Are they their own masters, with appetites and ambition the equal of men, which is how the playwrights saw them? Or are they to be presented as the innocent victims of men’s appalling patriarchy in the past, which is how you might see them reading the plays?”
Hollywood Tries Crowd-Funding Movies
“A film can take a long time to finance so we had this crowd-funding idea. We went to David Lynch for his seal of approval and he was up for it. He ended up making an abstract self-portrait and we’re going to give an original print of it to anyone who chooses to donate $50 towards the film, or a T-shirt featuring the print.”
Russian Art Curators Await Fate In Censorhip Trial
“A judge in Moscow could send two prominent art curators to jail tomorrow as a 14-month trial that has provoked fears of rising intolerance and attempts at censorship in Russia comes to an end.”
The Making Of A Young Conductor – Who Knows?
“This may be the Age of the Young Conductor – the domination of older talents is being eroded by, among others, Gustavo Dudamel, now 29, in Los Angeles and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, 35, in Philadelphia – but most newcomers still start more or less at sea. ‘There’s no real track for conductors,” he said. “Nobody seems to know how this works. Part of my anxiety is that I have no idea what constitutes a foothold’.”