“Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Ireland, and Opera Theatre Company are all facing possible extinction. The Arts Council is working on a proposal that would see all three companies … cease to exist.” Instead, a single company, based in Wexford’s new €33 million opera house, “would be set up to mount productions in Dublin, run the Wexford festival, and provide small-scale productions to tour around the country.”
Tag: 07.30.09
San Diego Museum Receives Huge Collection Of Non-Western Art
“Six months into a year-long exhibition of Oceanic art, the San Diego Museum of Art has announced a major acquisition of artworks from one of the lenders, the Sana Art Foundation. Under terms of a new alliance between the two organizations, about 900 works from Oceania, Africa and the Americas will be transferred from the foundation to the museum.”
Vampirism, Catholicism And Korea (According To Park Chan-wook)
“When you consider the concept of vampirism, it is inherently part of a Western culture. And also Catholicism is also part of the Western tradition that comes into Korea. So you can say also that my film [Thirst] is about things that are coming from the outside entering in, such as this virus that enters into the priest, changing him [into a vampire]. So we’re looking at things from the exterior entering into the interior and whether our inside can accept this thing that has entered from the outside or whether it will reject it.”
Reed Puts Publishers Weekly, Library Journal On Market
“Reed Business Information is putting Publishers Weekly and its affiliated publications, Library Journal and School Library Journal, up for sale. The sale of the group is part of RBI’s strategy to divest most of its trade magazines in the U.S.”
Tuned To The Zeitgeist, Theatre Is Deconstructing The Era
“With unprecedented intensity, new plays are telling us about our lives in styles ranging from documentary socio-drama to great apocalyptic statements. Our fears are transformed into hopes in that process of joyful recognition peculiar to the experience of live theatre.”
Let Us Now Praise Valery Gergiev
Editorial: “It is not difficult to question the extraordinary workload that the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who holds major musical appointments in St Petersburg, London and New York, inflicts upon himself. … The Gergiev Ring may be a self-imposed challenge too far, but Mr Gergiev’s hyperactivity is overwhelmingly his strength rather than his weakness. His lifestyle may be intense, but so is his music-making.”
Black Orchestral Musicians Are Out There; Networking Isn’t
“Defenders of the status quo will tell you two things about African Americans and the American symphony orchestra: The reason there are so few blacks in orchestras is that the talent just isn’t out there, and racism can’t be the issue because auditions are played behind screens.” What’s really missing may be the relationships that help musicians get hired.
House-Hunting Tour: A Frank Lloyd Wright Masterpiece
“Known as the Ennis House, it’s an architectural masterpiece designed by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. But, like a lot of old houses, it needs some work. Drive past the grime and glitz of Hollywood toward the hills of Griffith Park and suddenly, there it is: a Mayan temple perched above the city. Ennis House is one of Wright’s most famous creations — and not only to architecture buffs.” And it’s for sale.
Killing Its Film Program Is Proof LACMA Has Lost Its Mind
“You’ll excuse me, but the logic of needing to stop the program in order to rethink it sounds suspiciously like the apocryphal Vietnam War rationale that ‘we had to burn the village to save it.’ … If I am being a little tough on the museum, and I know I am, it’s because their reasons for doing what they’ve just done seem especially specious. LACMA’s thinking may seem just fine in the abstract but it doesn’t hold up under any kind of examination.”
Nightingales’ Song And Other Sound-Design Obsessions
“Most filmgoers focus on the acting, dialogue, costumes, even the soundtrack, before noticing the many sounds also required to create and sustain a mood. Yet, says [sound designer Jane Tattersall], it’s those background details that can make or break the moment. If she gets them right, her skill is essentially unnoticed; if she gets them wrong, she ruins many months, maybe years, of others’ hard work.”