The Italian mezzo will succeed current director Riccardo Muti at the helm of the three-day late-spring event – a festival usually overshadowed by its Easter and summer counterparts – in 2012. The highlight of her first season will be Handel’s Giulio Cesare starring … Cecilia Bartoli.
Tag: 09.21.10
Jerusalem’s Planned Museum of Tolerance Reveals Revised Design
“The Simon Wiesenthal Center has unveiled a new design by Chyutin Architects for its planned Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, which will be built at an estimated cost of $100 million. … The Chyutin design replaces an earlier one by renowned architect Frank Gehry, whose estimated cost of $250m. made it too expensive to build.”
Here We Go Again: Batsheva Dance Co. Faces Boycotts in US
Two activist groups “announced the boycott in an open letter to the [company],” which begins a New York engagement this week. The letter said the groups were calling the boycott because of the company’s ‘collaboration with the Israeli state and its Brand Israel campaign’.”
Arizona Opera Settles Contracts With Two Unions (Out of Four)
“Arizona Opera choristers and the company’s Phoenix stage employees have agreed to a three-year contract that freezes their pay and cuts by half travel reimbursements and housing per diems. … That leaves the opera with two union contracts still unsettled” – those of the Tuscon backstage workers and the orchestra musicians.
Robot Dances Dying Swan Ballet, (Reportedly) Moves Viewers to Tears
In Sweden, “a robot swan is literally moving people to tears with a four-minute, professionally choreographed routine, dramatically executed to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.“
Defying Clear Channel, Rock Radio’s Evil Empire
Broadcasting out of a tiny storefront on lower First Avenue in Manhattan, East Village Radio “deftly leverag[es] street cred, an easy relationship with artists, and the identity of a bohemian counterculture neighborhood into a burgeoning Internet audience” of about one million listeners per month – and no transmitter.
Why Some People Don’t Agree With Scientific Consensus
“It’s not that one group is paying more attention to what scientific consensus is. But there’s a pervasive tendency to form perceptions of scientific consensus that reinforce people’s values.”
The Big Con – Do We Believe “Reality” Anymore?
“When it comes to entertainment, we in the media are sticklers for attributable facts. But in Hollywood, the truth is seen as being much more elastic, in part because film and TV writers create drama for a living, in part because people in showbiz tell so many white lies every day that the notion of a bigger truth often eludes them.”
The Enduring “Les Miz” – Can 40 Million Frenchmen Be Wrong?
“As one of the critics who was decidedly cool about it in 1985, I’m often asked if I got it wrong. To which my response is that of Bernard Shaw when accused of attacking some vastly popular piece of Parisian boulevard theatre: ‘Forty million Frenchmen can’t be right’.”
The World’s Second Largest Producer Of Movies? Nigeria
“Nollywood makes about 2,400 films per year, putting it ahead of the US, but behind India, according to a Unesco report last year. Nigerian film-makers tend to operate in a fast and furious manner; shoots rarely last longer than two weeks, cheap digital equipment is almost always used and the average budget is about $15,000 (£9,664).”