“Those in both the for-profit theater industry, which depends on wealthy investors, and the nonprofit world, which depends on corporate donations, are anxiously watching to see just what kind of fallout will land on them” from the current economic crisis. “How do you maintain the momentum and at the same time cut your exposure down to the minimum? Where do you cut and where do you stay the course?”
Tag: 10.08.08
Tracing A Composer’s Awakening
John Adams’s new memoir, Hallelujah Junction, reads like a gentle repudiation of the idea, popular at mid-century, that audience approval is irrelevant to classical music. “He knew at once, he says, that atonality, far from being the promised land that Schoenberg and Babbitt had predicted, was a dead end.”
Conductor Wants Scottish Opera To Embrace Elitism
The new music director of Scottish Opera ” is forthright, straight-talking, to the point and fearlessly provocative.” In fact, Francesco Corti is unlike anything the company has seen before. “I’m sorry; probably this is heretical, but I believe that opera is still something for the elite… You don’t have to be commercial to sell it. You have to aim always at the top.”
More Than One Way To Skin An Orchestra
Look at orchestras from coast to coast in Canada, and you’ll discover very different ways of running things. “Ottawa’s orchestra is a bit on the conservative side, sticking with the more classic classical… Across the country, the Victoria Symphony’s conductor Tania Miller eyes that line between pop and classical.” And Kent Nagano’s Montreal Symphony “peppers its programs with post-tonal scores and edgy guest conductors.”
Falletta Named To US Arts Council Post
JoAnn Falletta, the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Virginia Symphony has been appointed by President Bush to the National Council on the Arts. “The council advises the National Endowment for the Arts on programs and policies. Council members help oversee grant applications, funding program guidelines and national initiatives.”
Louise Bourgeois Knocks a Critic Sideways
“I was the victim of a brutal emotional mugging… I was shaking, on the verge of tears and genuinely frightened… [by] a set of paintings that are so filled with rage, fear and frustration that, for the first time in my life, I began to understand what it must be like to be a woman.”
This Is Why It Needs That Renovation
At the Sydney Opera House last night, Opera Australia’s new production of The Makropulos Case was stopped in its tracks when the theater’s lighting desk (“one of the most heavily used pieces of theatrical equipment on the planet”) malfunctioned and plunged the auditorium into darkness for several minutes.
Jacques Brel, Neither Alive Nor Well, Is Entangled With Lawyers
On the 30th anniversary of his death, a Sotheby’s auction of the singer’s manuscripts is taking place amidst a messy legal dispute among his heirs.
Former Funeral Parlor Becomes Paris’s New Modern Art Mecca
“The former state funeral parlour at 104 rue d’Aubervilliers in north-east Paris will reopen this weekend after being transformed into the city’s most daring modern arts centre. […] Not only are Parisians attracted by the macabre past of the building – known only by its street number, Centquatre – the centre will also bring artists and tourists into the 19th arrondissement best known for its high-rises, poverty and gang culture.”
An Extraordinary Bond: Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
A newly-published collection of all the two poets’ surviving correspondence documents “a remarkable friendship – part long-distance romance, part artistic collaboration, part AA meeting – that lasted almost thirty years.”