Dennis Hanthorn is Atlanta Opera’s new general director. But even before he officially begins, he’s had to make some difficult decisions. “With an almost 50 percent drop in subscriptions to date, Hanthorn eliminated a quarter of the opera’s performances for the coming year to avoid going deeper into debt. Four productions are still on the 2004-05 calendar: “Carmen,” “Don Giovanni,” “La Bohème” and “Fidelio.” But the total number of performances will be trimmed from 16 to 12.”
Tag: 08.18.04
John Adams’ Nuclear Opera
Composer John Adams is at work on a new opera – “Doctor Atomic” – about scientist Robert Oppenheimer and the race to create the first atomic bomb. “I really thought I would never write a grand opera again: it’s so much damn hard work. But it just seemed, as in Nixon and Klinghoffer, such a potent theme with an incredible story that I could really sink my teeth into.”
Minnesota Pub Radio Buys Up Small Classical Station
Public radio powerhouse Minnesota Public Radio buys small independendent community station KCAL, St. Olaf College’s tiny, freewheeling classical music station. “Within 48 hours, WCAL was inundated with hundreds of e-mails and calls. ‘There’s sadness. And people are expressing their personal relationship with this station and with the announcers. They felt like the announcers were friends.”
A Kilkenny To Rival Edinburgh?
Edinburgh, Shmedinburgh… There’s a serious new festival rival to the Scottish behemoth. It’s Kilkenny, where “what used to be a local arts week has transformed into an international festival that is becoming a viable alternative to its bigger, brasher Scottish counterpart. Last year, Kilkenny acquired a dynamic new director in the shape of Claudia Woolgar, who has tilted the festival towards eastern Europe.”
John The Baptist’s Cave Found?
“A quarter of a million pottery shards from small jugs, an underground pool, a foot-washing stone and wall carvings unearthed in a large cave west of Jerusalem could be the first archaeological evidence for the existence of St. John the Baptist, according to a forthcoming book.”
Artist Tows Bus With His Toe
As a protest an artist has pulled a London bus 30 meters with his big toe. “Mark McGowan, 38, dragged the 7.5 tonne vehicle on Wednesday in Camberwell, south London. The stunt was in protest against bus lanes and mayor Ken Livingstone’s ‘ridiculous traffic strategy’.” Last year McGowan pushed a nut seven miles down raods with his nose to protest student debt.
Ireland’s No Atlantis
The Irish National Museum dismisses claims in a new book that Ireland is the mythic city of Atlantis. An archaeologist has “linked Newgrange passage tomb and the Hill of Tara with ancient remnants of the mythical Atlantis- first described by Greek thinker Plato. But National Museum director Dr Patrick Wallace said today that there was no archaeological basis to associate Ireland with the utopian land.”
The Classics Will Set You Free?
On the campus of Brown University in a program called ArtsLit, a teacher named Kurt Wootton is using reading and performance of classic texts to teach literacy to local teenagers from struggling schools. “Like immigrants of earlier generations – the Italian stonecutter tuning his radio to opera, the Irish stevedore reciting Yeats in a tavern, the Jewish tailor viewing a Yiddish production of ‘King Lear’ – Mr. Wootton sees high culture not as the oppressor of the lowly but as an agent of their liberation.”
Fighting To Keep Stone Henge From The Cars
Preservationists are opposing a plan to put a car tunnel under Stone Henge. “For them, the proposals prove the government cares more about motorists than preserving the integrity of a centuries old landmark. ‘Stonehenge has been there 5,000 years and the car was only invented 100 years ago. To cater to something that’s been there for such a short time is patently absurd’.”
Brendel Gives Last Broadcast Concert
Pianist Alfred Brendel has given his last live-broadcast performance. It was at a Proms concert in London. The 73-year-old pianist played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto – which he first played at the 1973 Proms.