Scottish Opera is in dire straits. Some say “unless urgent action is taken on funding, Scotland could be forced to merge its national opera company with Opera North in Leeds, England to survive. Shouldn’t Scotland be funding its own opera?
Tag: 09.29.05
Anonymous Five
The lack of any marquee names on this year’s shortlist for the Giller Prize could be seen as a PR misstep, especially since the CBC lockout virtually guarantees that the award will not be televised for the first time in recent memory. But where there are no superstars, everyone becomes a frontrunner, and the unusual shortlist could also be a unique opportunity for fresh new literary voices to emerge from the vast sea of Canadian literature.
Google TV
Google, the search-engine-turned-internet-juggernaut, is finalizing plans to begin streaming TV programs online. The company has “already signed up a channel in the United States to provide programmes for its Google TV station and is in talks with the BBC to broadcast its shows. [Google] hopes to build up a massive online database of programmes that can be searched and watched from any computer, with users able to search for episodes of any show from broadcasters who sign up to the service. It will also let British viewers watch hit television shows from the US months before they are shown in the UK.”
25 Music Critics In One Concert Hall? Is That Legal?
The Columbia School of Journalism has released a list of 25 arts journalists who will be taking part in an NEA-sponsored Institute in Classical Music and Opera this October. “Participants will attend performances at all major New York concert venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera. They will write reviews and take part in writing workshops led by critics and editors at the New York Times, the New Yorker and other major publications, study music history with professors at NYU and Columbia, and meet with leading decision makers and thinkers in the field of classical music.”
PSO Looks To Its Musicians For Fiscal Relief
The musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony got an astonishingly mammoth raise this season, the result of a backloaded contract negotiated by a management team that his since left the building. And now, with a financial crunch on the horizon, the PSO’s current managers are hoping the musicians will be willing to take their raise back a notch. A proposed new three-year deal, which would replace the current contract, would shave $6,000 off the minimum salary, but restore the higher wage beginning in fall 2006, and preserve it through the 2007-08 season. The musicians will vote on the revised deal tomorrow.
Finally, Black Ink In Philly
In what will be seen as a major turnaround for a troubled organization, the Philadelphia Orchestra has announced a balanced budget for fiscal 2004, following several years of deficits and a contentious contract negotiation with its musicians which very nearly ended in a strike. The orchestra also announced that it played to 89% of its hall’s capacity, and that its ongoing endowment campaign has passed the $100 million mark.
Giller Shortlist Released
Canada’s Giller Prize, which awards $40,000 for the best homegrown novel, got new life this month when a major bank stepped up to sponsor the competition. Now, the five-author shortlist has been released, and there are a few surprises. Well-reviewed author Joseph Boyden was left off, and some of the finalists are not terribly well-known. But now the prognosticating can begin, and nearly 100 libraries across Canada will be participating in a “Guess the Giller” contest over the next several weeks.
Vancouver Fest Unveils New Cinema
The Vancouver International Film Festival launches tonight, and the centerpiece won’t be a movie, but the “luxurious, state-of-the-art, 175-seat theatre” that is making its debut at the festival this week. “In addition to providing practical opportunities for year-round programming as well as working space for filmmakers, a film archive and artistic partnerships, the centre is important symbolically in that it gives cultural and physical prominence to the serious type of cinema the society offers.”
Vindication Of An Architect – 169 Years Too Late
“When the National Portrait Gallery reopens next July after a six-year, $216-million renovation, the new space will represent a triumph for preservationists, for artists, for historians — and for Robert Mills. Mills, the original architect, was taken off the project after a rival designer convinced Congress that Mills’ plan in 1836 for a fireproof building — a major preoccupation for a city in which the British had burned the White House 22 years earlier — would not work… Now restorers have peeled away 169 years of history and found that Mills was right.”
Judging Professors By Their Online Q-Rating
When the web site, RateMyProfessors.com, was launched six years ago, most academic insitutions viewed it as an occasionally hurtful but harmless outlet for student opinion. But the site, on which students at colleges and universities around the world can evaluate their teachers’ performance with impunity, has grown to the point that it is now affecting class enrollment at some schools. Professors and administrators hate the site, and lawsuits are regularly threatened against its owner. But the site is far from a vitriolic free-for-all, with positive comments outnumbering negative ones, and a group of volunteer “student administrators” assigned to keep an eye on verifiable claims.