Shan Jixiang, who heads the government’s administration for cultural heritage, told state media, “Bulldozers have razed many historical blocks. The protection of cultural heritage in China has entered the most difficult, grave and critical period.” Shan made a point of criticizing the waste of building materials and the “boring” new cityscapes.
Tag: 08.04.10
Mark Ravenhill’s New Opera About Irritable Bowel Syndrome
The playwright responsible for Shopping and F***ing recounts how a crush on an ENO stagehand led to his becoming a real opera queen, one whose first lyric work, written with composer Conor Mitchell, opens next week in London.
NJ State Opera Owes Hundreds Of Thousands Months After Successful Comeback
“The New Jersey State Opera’s production of “Porgy and Bess” in May was heralded as both a cultural milestone for Newark and the rebirth of the company. But two months after the performances, opera officials owe about $230,000 — a third of all costs — to a variety of vendors and contracted workers, including the musicians in the orchestra.”
How Artificial Intelligence Is “Growing”
“The Avidians replicated themselves for nearly 100 generations, “living” and “dying” in the cell. Then one evolved a computer instruction to move forward. When it landed in an energy-richer cell, it reproduced more rapidly. Many thousands of generations later, some of its descendents were seen following the food gradient to its source, where concentrations were highest.”
Mei-Ann Chen Named Chicago Sinfonietta Music Director
The 37-year-old Chen, the incoming MD of the Memphis Symphony and one of several promising women among the rising 30-something generation of conductors, takes over from the Sinfonietta’s founding music director, Paul Freeman, in 2011-12.
Fighting Over Graffiti in Rome
An American attorney living in the city has recruited squads of volunteers, Italian and foreign, to “clean up after graffiti artists who have swathed the city’s palazzos and piazzas in tentacles of spray paint.” But some Romans see all that spray paint as continuing a local tradition that stretches back to antiquity – and reclaims their city from the tourist hordes.
Roundabout Theater, in a First, Takes a Playwright as Associate Artist
“The playwright Theresa Rebeck (The Understudy, Mauritius) has become the first dramatist to be named as associate artist of Roundabout Theater Company, the nonprofit theater said on Wednesday, as part of its effort to develop more new work for its stages.”
Bookslut Contemplates Celebrity
Jessa Crispin: “Celebrity is a weird gig. It used to be the place of well scrubbed, heavily managed stars. Now the barriers are down, anyone can be famous for a little while if they are OK with being outrageously idiotic, and people confuse notoriety with fame … Yet it’s still a game everyone wants in on. People are desperate to be torn to shreds by the masses.”
The [title of show] Team Is Working on Another Meta-Musical
This show’s title is And Now This Is Happening. What’s it about? Says actor Hunter Bell, “Just like [title of show], if we tried to explain in the early incarnations what it was about I don’t think I’d know.”
The Getty’s Man Of Research
“In his three years of running the Getty Research Institute, Thomas Gaehtgens has gained the admiration of his staff for making the institute a more open and collaborative place. His employees even wonder whether trustees are looking at him for the top job once held by James Wood.”