“Ballerinas with machine guns will grace the stage for the first performance at China National Grand Theatre, when the spectacular arts complex opens its doors on Tuesday. The Red Detachment of Women ballet is one of seven shows that will be put on during a trial of the silver, egg-shaped building designed by the French architect Paul Andreu.” Among the audience will be “people whose homes were demolished to make space for the theatre development.”
Tag: 09.25.07
In Seattle, The Great Concertmaster Experiment Begins
“It’s been a month since the Seattle Symphony made international headlines with the announcement that it would become the first American orchestra with four permanent concertmasters.” And now the season has begun. “Will it be a season of musical chairs, with inconsistent leadership and a series of communications challenges? Or one in which the four violinists energize the strings and the orchestra as a whole with new musical leadership?”
A “Genius” Inquires: Is Visibility Too Much To Ask?
“As of today, painter Joan Snyder is a MacArthur Foundation anointed ‘genius,’ and there’s just one modest request she has: Could the institutions that own her paintings please put them on display? ‘At least two major museums in New York own my work, and it sits in the basement,’ she said, referring to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. ‘And now the Guggenheim has one, and I hope they hang it.’ “
How Five MacArthur Winners Spent Their First $100K
Jazz violinist Regina Carter, a MacArthur winner last year, is at work on several projects and says she’s put her money away, but she’s also “had to deal with people from her past trying to put the touch on her and show presenters trying to knock down her usual fee.” And playwright Sarah Ruhl? She says she’s using the cash to pay babysitters.
Getty, Italy To Ink Return Agreement Today
“The J. Paul Getty Museum said it will sign an agreement today to return 40 antiquities to the Italian government, after a dispute over stolen relics that rocked the reputation of the world’s richest art institution. The agreement will be signed by Getty Museum Director Michael Brand and the Italian government this afternoon in Rome….”
Early-Music Champion Albert Fuller Dies At 81
“Albert Fuller, an influential harpsichordist, conductor, teacher and author, and the founder of two important early music organizations, the Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities and the Helicon Foundation, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan.”
Congress Protects The Citizenry From Gangsta Rap
“Americans have always been skeptical of government support for the arts, with one shining exception. When it comes to publicity driven congressional investigations into comic book reading, risque dancing, dirty songwriting and the many other threats to the commonweal that crazy kids throughout the ages have considered ‘dope,’ this nation has been happy to devote its tax base to the enrichment of world culture. So props to Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), who today will be getting to the bottom of this whole gangsta rap business.”
Mourning Bip, Marceau’s White-Painted Everyman
“For me,” Lewis Segal writes, “Bip was the reality, Marceau a kind of invisible conjurer. So I’m mourning Bip’s death as much as Marceau’s. But, alas, there’ll be no obituaries for Bip, no tribute to him from the government of France, even though we knew him a lot better than we knew Marceau and will miss him just as much. Together, they proved to me and to so many others that the realm of art is as palpable as any dimension of existence….”
Gelb Brings The Glam Back To Opera
“(F)or a certain type of New Yorker, the type who might view fall as a pearl-strand of grand parties staged on a grand scale, fall officially began last night with the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ at Lincoln Center. This, at least, is how Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, would have it. Which is why, in his second year, he continued his practice of inaugurating the opera season with a lavishly choreographed, heavily promoted gala.”
Beyond Tang: How The Space Race Influenced Art
The space race affected “American popular culture and art, from movies and television to architecture and design. … Deciding which cultural offerings from those post-Sputnik years were deep and lasting and which were probably not (space-age bachelor-pad music? ‘The Jetsons’? ‘Barbarella’? Tang?) will always be topics of impassioned debate among space aficionados. But a half-century into that once-imagined orbital future, it has become a little easier to put the era into cultural perspective.”