The founder and director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and one of the most respected maestros now working, Fischer has lately been developing an impressive sideline in directing operas. Now he’s composed one, based on one of Europe’s last “blood libel” trials, in which a Jewish man was accused of using the blood of a murdered Christian to make matzo.
Tag: 10.07.13
How To Put The Jungle Book Onstage And Not Come Off As Racist Or Clueless
“Staging Kipling in 2013 isn’t the same task as it was in 1962 when Disney first tackled it, or in 1942 when the Korda brothers filmed their resonant version. … New Jungle Book adapters can’t claim the same obliviousness; they must contend with the legacy of British colonialism, American racism, and contemporary identity politics against the backdrop of a multimillion dollar brand.” Mary Zimmerman seems to have met the challenge.
Wes Anderson Talks All About Making The Royal Tenenbaums
In an extended Q&A excerpt from Matt Zoller Seitz’s new Wes Anderson coffee-table book, the filmmaker discusses everything from the influence of Orson Welles to house-hunting in Harlem to shooting moving-through-walls shots to convincing a reluctant Gene Hackman to play a role written for him while only getting paid scale.
New York City Ballet Star Breaks Foot Onstage
“The New York City Ballet’s principal dancer Chase Finlay is not expected back onstage until the winter season after breaking his foot during a performance of Swan Lake, said a company spokeswoman.”
American Theaters Are Finally Coming Around To Hearing Loops
The technology, which magnetically transfers the sounds picked up by a microphone and transmitter to a special coil in a hearing aid or cochlear implant, has been used widely in Europe for years. Now a critical mass of venues in the U.S. are coming around to installing the equipment.
Techie Cracks The Code: How Vermeer Did That
Tim Jenison “believes he has solved one of the greatest mysteries in art: how did 17th-century Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer paint so photo-realistically 150 years before the invention of photography?”
Why Did NYCity Opera Fail? Blame A Brain-Dead Board
“At the beginning of this year, City Opera held an online auction of old sets, costumes, props — selling its history. And why ever not? It had no future.”
San Francisco’s Entrepreneur Culture Is Changing Us
“What we’re seeing now is literally a shift in the way that people do business–a shift from hierarchical architectures to networked architectures.”
Why I Prefer To Hire English Majors
“For my money (literally and figuratively), for my needs, and I suggest the needs of most small businesses, English majors are easily the top choice when it comes to getting the type of teammate who can make us all better, as they say in basketball.”
How New York Is Killing Its Own Creativity
“Middle-class people can barely afford to live here anymore, so forget about emerging artists, musicians, actors, dancers, writers, journalists and small business people. Bit by bit, the resources that keep the city vibrant are being eliminated.”