With its Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts due to open in fall 2006, Toronto is heading toward a richer operatic future, more like that of another opera-mad North American city. “What made San Franciscans so susceptible to the plight of consumptive sopranos and murdered tenors? Sheer exposure has had a great deal to do with it. Since the War Memorial Opera House threw open its many doors in 1932, the city of the Golden Gate has possessed what most cities on this continent still lack, a house specifically designed to accommodate the stage works of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner.”
Tag: 10.12.04
Now, That’s Government Support For The Arts
“Denmark’s Queen Margrethe will design the costumes and scenery for an upcoming play based on the fairy tale ‘Thumbelina,’ written by Hans Christian Andersen.”
Copyright, Coincidence Led To Loeb Fracas
A Damian Loeb painting titled “Blow Job (Three Little Boys)” that was removed from a University of Hartford exhibition does, in fact, depict the sons of a wealthy businessman with ties to the school, staff and faculty say. “And Douglas S. Cramer, the collector who lent the works for the show, said the university had informed him that the boys’ family was distressed by the painting. … But by every account, from the curator to Mr. Cramer to Mr. Loeb, the painting’s removal was less a clear censorship case than it was one of copyright and surprising coincidence.”
The Singing, Dancing, Acting Irish?
The University of Notre Dame is known for two things: Catholicism and football, not necessarily in that order. With a new, $64 million performing arts complex intended to be a presenting and teaching space, the university is seeking to become known for prominence in a third area: the arts.
Viva France!
France will officially become the first nation to allow owners of theaters and concert halls to install cell phone jamming equipment. The devices will still allow emergency calls to be made from the premises when necessary, but will block all other signals to and from the building during performances. Similar devices are explicitly banned in other countries, but the French decision could be a harbinger of things to come elsewhere.
Iraqi To Design Scottish Museum
Iraqi architect Hadid has been tapped to design Scotland’s new £50 million riverfront museum. “Glasgow, a former European city of architecture and design, is bracing itself for the arrival of one of Hadid’s avante-garde designs which will occupy one of the most symbolic sites in the city.” Hadid, an avowed deconstructionist, is promising that her building will be, of all things, “fun.”