So Opera Cleveland is off to a fresh start. “Hmm. Haven’t we been here before? A year ago, Opera Cleveland was preparing for its first season with an artistic director, Leon Major, and principal con ductor, Richard Buckley, who were eager to cultivate the new company, a merger between Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland.”
Tag: 08.26.07
How Are Private Art Collections “National Treasures”?
“Pictures, over the decades, have been earmarked by the government as ‘national treasures’, which are not to be given export licences. My republican gorge rises. How are Van Dycks, owned by the earls of Pembroke, part of anyone’s heritage (unless your name is Herbert, of course)? “We”, the nation, can see the pictures, at Wilton House for £12 a head (or, touchingly noblesse oblige, free on September 7 this year). But that doesn’t make them ours.”
In UK; Let Libraries Be Libraries
“An appeal to politicans’ hearts seems destined always to fail, so far as our libraries go, so I am going to have to be cynical about it and appeal to them on the grounds of the only thing they really seem to care about: votes.”
Museums Try To Woo Hispanic Visitors
“It’s hard to argue with the goal of democratizing museums, but some of these strategies smack of condescension. Why assume, for example, that Latinos are interested in dinosaurs only if they get free tacos? Or that they care about art only if it reflects their own most cherished religious images?”
Lessons To Be Learned From The Kids From Caracas
Venezuela’s youth orchestra wowed London this week. “Music that is too often dismissed as difficult and elitist is being recognised for its ability to transform damaged lives. This initiative needs to be extended across the rest of the UK. Instead, we see cuts in spending and depressingly little time devoted to collegiate music-making in most of our schools. This must change.”
Getty Research Institute Gets A New Director
He’s Thomas W. Gaehtgens. Over the years, the institute has evolved into an ever more complex organization that has broadened its collections, engaged in community outreach, collaborated with local institutions and provided services for the public as well as credentialed scholars. Many of the materials in the library are available to students and the public.”
Belarus Police Raid Theatre
“Police special forces stormed the performance of a play by an underground theatre group in Belarus on Wednesday and arrested 50 people. Political opponents and counterculture groups have been suppressed in the former Soviet republic of Belarus under the leadership of Alexander Lukashenko. The Free Theatre angered the regime this summer.”
Stop The Clock – Dinosaurs Rule
This year’s big pop concerts are bands who have been playing for decades. And they’re huge business. “In the past, many veteran bands played almost exclusively for fellow baby boomers – fans who literally grew up with them. Today, these acts are increasingly drawing multi-generational audiences.”
What To Make Of The New Yorker’s New Lit Critic?
James Wood is an unsparing critic. “Even his detractors concede that such takedowns are the fruits of a love for the novel — of a certain sort. But what does it mean that the most storied magazine in American history has aligned itself with a critic who essentially rejects the premises of a broad swath of contemporary American fiction?”
Steampunk – Victorian Age Meets Computer
Steampunk has its roots in science fiction literature, where it describes a corner of the genre obsessed with Victoriana and the idea that the computer age evolved alongside the industrial. Steampunk stories, which started appearing with regularity in the 1980s, eschew clean and orderly visions of the future in favor of gas-lighted streets, steam engines belching toxic smoke, and dastardly villains inventing strange technologies.