Four Years After It Nearly Closed, San Diego Opera Is Thriving

“Back in 2014, San Diego Opera survived a near-shutdown when a handful of renegade board members and donors from around the world saved the company from extinction. … Four years post-rescue, San Diego Opera has stabilized. The company finished its 2017-2018 season in the black, the office is fully staffed, its edgy 2-year-old Detour series is a hit, and ticket sales for next season are significantly higher.”

A Challenge To All Architects: Walk Through Your Building Wearing A Skirt

Transparent walkways and glass walkways are quite, quite common – including in architecture schools. “This not only affects the women who work and study in those buildings — according to the Assn. of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 42% of accredited architecture degrees were awarded to women in 2013 — but it normalizes the idea among architecture students that transparent walkways are just a benign architectural feature. They are not.”

The Challenges (And Rewards) Of Producing “Cyrano” In Prison

“We just sat in chairs and read the script,” said Mr. Scatamacchia, who is 63 and retired from the music-publishing industry. “‘What are you saying here?’ ‘What does this mean?’ I encouraged them to rewrite their dialogue in modern jargon. These guys are just talking to each other.” Both performances — one for the inmates and another for about 100 outsiders — were well received, despite the periodic interruption of a prison guard’s walkie-talkie. It wasn’t hard to imagine that some of the men were being applauded for the first time in their lives.

Design For Emanuel Church Shooting Memorial Revealed

“As envisioned by the architect Michael Arad, who also designed the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, sections of the church’s parking lot would be transformed into two meditative spaces, one a stone memorial courtyard, the other a grassy survivors’ garden. Together they would speak to the suffering and resilience of a church that has outlasted two centuries of persecution through its practice of faith and forgiveness.”

China’s Most Expensive Film Ever Yanked From Screens After Box Office Disaster

“In the long lead-up to its release, Chinese fantasy epic Asura was promoted as China’s most expensive film ever made, with a production budget of over $110 million (750 million yuan). So perhaps it’s unsurprising that the film’s producers, which include Jack Ma’s Alibaba Pictures, decided to take desperate action after the movie opened to just $7.1 million over the weekend.”

How Science Is Building Better Dancers

The Royal Ballet is rich in tradition, but the company’s 97 dancers are now supported by a 17-strong team of sports science and healthcare experts. “Our facilities are now similar to those of a Premier League football club,” explains Gregory Retter, clinical director of ballet healthcare. “Strength, jumping, force attenuation, cardiovascular fitness, psychological wellbeing and nutrition; all support the dancer to be free to create artistic excellence. This is a completely new concept in dance.”

So Why Did Amazon Price My Book At $2630.52?

“Zowie,” the romance author Deborah Macgillivray wrote on Twitter last month after she discovered copies of her 2009 novel, “One Snowy Knight,” being offered for four figures. One was going for “$2,630.52 & FREE Shipping,” she noted. Since other copies of the paperback were being sold elsewhere on Amazon for as little as 99 cents, she was perplexed.

Apple Music Overtakes Spotify as Biggest Music Subscription Service

Apple Music’s growth accelerated past Spotify’s, and now, for the first time, Apple has pulled ahead. According to a report from Digital Music News last week, Apple Music has become the top on-demand streaming music service in the U.S. in terms of users. (The exact user numbers weren’t released.) Both apps have roughly 20 million U.S.-based subscribers, but Apple Music now has the upper hand.