Congress has approved $1 million to bring Shakespeare to the troops. “The $368 billion defense bill recently approved by Congress includes $1 million to bring performances of Shakespeare to troops at stateside military bases. The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis will be one of seven theater companies involved in the unprecedented effort.”
Tag: 10.10.03
English National Opera’s Frayed Edges
“Two years of boardroom rows, budget deficits, strike threats, sackings and redundancies, plummeting box-office sales and the critics’ thumbs-down have taken a chastening toll on an institution that once breezily proclaimed itself as opera’s ‘Powerhouse’. Now ENO is beginning to reinvent itself in less aggressive guise, with a new managerial team led by artistic director and chief executive Sean Doran.”
He Who Judges The Books
“The annual post-prandial lecturette on Booker night has been a thing of controversy in the hands of Lisa Jardine (too populist), Gerald Kaufman (too sinister), Kenneth Baker (too fulsome) or Carmen Callil (too critical of the home product). John Carey, however, is someone you can trust. Among the politicians, publishers, historians and media tarts who judge the Booker, he is a bona fide literary-critical star. He retired four years ago as the Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, (the top Eng Lit job in the land) and his weekly reviews are by common consent the ne plus ultra of waspish evaluation.”
English National Opera Gets Some Help
The English National Opera has been in a crisis for so long, it’s getting harder and harder to remember when the company was able to just concentrate on producing good work. Now some good news. “Yesterday the artistic director, Sean Doran, announced the biggest sponsorship deal in its history, £3m over three years from Sky and the digital channel Artsworld. And its Ring Cycle next year has got the largest sponsorship for a single production – £300,000 from the MFI group, best known for bargain kitchens.”
High Canadian Dollar Threatens Movie Biz
Is Governor Schwarzenegger going to try to stop Hollywood films from fleeing to Canada to shoot? Maybe. Maybe not. But “the biggest issue impacting runaway production is the high Canadian dollar. Five years ago, I could count on an increase in my budget of 30-per-cent shooting in Canada. Now, because of the dollar, you may get 10 per cent to 15 per cent, if you’re lucky. The gap is narrowing and the payoff for us coming up there is getting increasingly slim.”
But When That Carrot Hits A Wrong Note!
The First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra has left the crisper for a European tour (they have a CD, natch). “The orchestra’s instruments consist entirely of fresh vegetables, minimally abetted by some kitchen gadgets and a power drill. Before a show, the nine orchestra members go produce shopping and spend about four hours honing their particular devices. Carrots play a major role: some are hollowed out and made into flutes capable of mean trills; others are lined up like a xylophone; a few get grated. Gourds are slapped, peas and celery snapped, leeks used as drumsticks on pumpkins. Perhaps the prettiest instrument, the gurkophon is made from a cucumber with a carrot mouthpiece and a red pepper bell.”
Yerba Buena At Ten
San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center is a different kind of arts center. “Inspired by the German Kunst- hallen, exhibition spaces that maintain no permanent collections, the center instead has focused on visual and performing arts that showcase emerging talent from across the town’s diverse cultural populations. Curators make a special effort to showcase Asian, Hispanic, and African-American artists.” Now Yerba Buena is ten years old.
The State Museum Jostling The Hermitage
The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg has been on an expansion tear. “Since 1988, when Vladimir Gusev became its director, the museum has expanded to take in four palaces around the city: the Mikhailovsky Palace, the Engineers’ Castle, the Stroganov Palace and the Marble Palace. ‘The Hermitage is begining to feel uneasy about our expansion’.”
Pevere: Kazan Doesn’t Deserve Accolades
It may be bad form to speak ill of the dead, but at least one writer says that filmmaker Elia Kazan deserves no posthumous forgiveness for his famous decision to “name names” in the Congressional witchhunts of the 1950s. Kazan was a great filmmaker, writes Geoff Pevere, but he chose to preserve the safety of his own situation by deliberately ruining the lives and careers of eight other individuals, and for that single, selfish, short-sighted act, he should forever be remembered not as an artist, but as a rat.