Last year thieves stole four paintings from the Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria. Now police have reason to believe that the thieves are trying to sell the artwork in Sydney. – The Age (Melbourne)
Tag: 10.10.00
PICASSOS RECOVERED IN TURKEY?
Paintings recovered by police in Turkey are believed to be by Picasso. “Police and cultural officials speculate that the works were plundered 10 years ago from the palaces and museums of Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion that led to the Persian Gulf war.” But others believe the art is fake. – New York Times
PAUL TAYLOR AND MERCE CUNNINGHAM
“One of these two men is ‘the world’s greatest living choreographer’. Or the other one is. They have both been called it, by rival camps. They are the twin faces of contemporary dance: the one experimental, abstract, visual; the other athletic, emotional, musical. The followers of dance divide fiercely on who is the master, with Taylor commanding delight from those who find Cunningham abstruse, and the Cunninghamites sometimes scorning Taylor for being too ‘accessible’.” – The Telegraph (London)
TALENT DRAIN
The Australian Ballet’s most senior principal dancer, 30-year-old Justine Summers, has resigned, blaming arthritis in her feet. Several other dancers are also leaving the company. – The Age (Melbourne)
WORD MACHINE
Stephen King is a writing industry. He writes 2,000 words a day and churns out a new book every three months or so. “According to Forbes magazine, he makes in excess of $50,000,000 a year (and I didn’t accidentally add a few zeros).” – The Age (Melbourne)
POET OR FRAUD?
Andreas Karavis has become something of a literary sensation, with his work turning up in prestigious publications. But he’s never granted an interview, and some wonder whether he exists. Poet David Solway, who speaks on Karavis’ behalf “may well simply be the man who discovered Karavis and been responsible for promoting his work in Canada. Or, according to a growing body of conspiratorial thought among the literati, he and Karavis may be one and the same.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
POWER OF THE PRESS
In China, an editor is arrested as his subversive publication is distributed everywhere. “I understood that the Chinese government was more and more angry that this issue was everywhere in the country, in the cities and outside. They said they saw it everywhere, even in bookstores, and they didn’t like it.” – New York Times
More opinions on the new “Dead Man Walking” opera premiere at San Francisco Opera last weekend
- “The music is rich and emotionally charged, betraying varied influences from Mussorgsky to Britten and Ravel, and carries enormous atmospheric power.” – The Guardian
- “A triumph beyond what even its most optimistic boosters could have predicted. – San Francisco Chronicle
- “For a first opera Heggie has done much right. His bitter-sweet music puts him in the line of happy-to-please American opera composers such as Menotti and Barber, which will not delight hardline critics, but he knows how to tell a story, how to hold the audience’s interest and rouse its emotions.” – Financial Times
- “This retelling is really a shrewd, highly marketable product: a love story with unlikely protagonists. It was composer Jake Heggie’s music and playwright Terrence McNally’s libretto, however, that accounted for its uproarious success with the opening-night audience.” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HOW TO SELL A NEW OPERA
“The puzzle of how to produce a new opera that will not tank at the box office, and that may even last as long as a Volvo (to borrow a phrase from Leonard Cohen), has become a minor fixation of opera companies all over North America, including the San Francisco Opera, which on Saturday raised the curtain on an adaptation of ‘Dead Man Walking’. In many ways, the opera is a textbook example of current received wisdom on how to introduce new work into the deeply conservative opera world.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)