Brazil’s Supreme Court has dismissed obscenity charges against opera director Gerald Thomas. “After an August 2003 performance of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” at Rio de Janeiro’s municipal theatre, Thomas shocked the audience and members of his cast by pulling down his pants and displaying his buttocks in response to jeers at the curtain call.”
Tag: 08.21.04
Airing The Shakespeare Debate
The debate on who wrote the Shakespeare plays has erupted at London’s Globe Theatre, where all theories are getting an airing. “For a long time, over on this side of the Atlantic at all events, to doubt that William, the man of Stratford, wrote the plays, was for a person who hoped to have a literary career in the university a very dangerous view to entertain,” he said. “It was not popular, to put it very bluntly. Very unpopular. It was felt to sort of suggest you were, to use a word, ‘unsound.’ We merely say that in the present state of knowledge, we certainly don’t think that the Stratfordians have made out their case, but we equally don’t believe that the Oxfordians have either.”
Welsh Opera Director Quits
“In a move that has shocked the opera world, the music director of the Welsh National Opera has resigned with immediate effect. At 26, the Ossetian conductor Tugan Sokhiev was the youngest musical director of a major national company anywhere in the world, except for Mikko Franck, the 25-year-old at the helm of Finnish National Opera.”
Donor Sues New Brunswick Gallery For Fraud
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s (New Brunswick, Canada) biggest patron is “suing the institution for fraud, claiming it lied or misrepresented the ownership of $200-million worth of disputed paintings. The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation and a grandson of Lord Beaverbrook filed suit this week. The suit seeks $15-million in returned donations and punitive damages from the gallery.”