Peter Conrad: “Start with the language, which is neither mellifluous like Italian nor gutturally potent like German. Its prosy disadvantages are made worse by the tortuous translators of opera librettos … Then there is the matter of the phlegmatic national temperament. The English are averse to the overwrought intensity of operatic protagonists.”
Tag: 10.18.09
New Chief Of Edinburgh Book Fest Greeted With Howls
“The Edinburgh International Book Festival, once described as ‘a cosy tea party in Charlotte Square’, has been stirred by furious opposition to its new director, Nick Barley. Within hours of being appointed last week Barley, 43, was the subject of a Facebook campaign demanding that his appointment be rescinded and labelling him ‘incompetent’.”
Finian’s Rainbow: Can You Go Back To Missitucky In 2009?
When Finian’s Rainbow opened in 1947, its treatment of American race relations – “white and black performers dancing and holding hands” and a bigoted white senator “magically turned black so he can experience bigotry firsthand” – was provocatively edgy. These days, some aspects of the show seem provocatively retrograde.
David Hockney Paints England In California Technicolor
“In 2005 Mr. Hockney – temporarily, he says – left Hollywood, where he had lived full time since 1978, to transform the manicured green and golden slopes, woods and farmland of the East Yorkshire landscape into spare, quickly worked compositions charged with pink, orange and violet.”
Seeing Things In Black And White, Or, The Color Of Sin
“Quick! What color is sinfulness? What about moral purity? If you’re like most people, you naturally see sinfulness as tinged in black, while moral purity comes through in soft whites.” If this phenomenon is deep-seated in human nature, “is there anything we could or should do about it, especially in places like courtrooms?”
What Makes A Book ‘American’?
“Three of the five candidates [for the National Book Award] in the fiction category were not born in this country; two of those three live abroad. … And what does it mean to write an ‘American’ book, if you don’t need an American address to do it?”
‘Why Not Film A Dance From The Ground Up?’
That’s the question asked by filmmaker Elliot Caplan. His answer, 15 Days of Dance: The Making of ‘Ghost Light’, “documents a three-week rehearsal process, followed by a one-week residency in Buffalo in early 2007. … The film, a rigorous and highly entertaining depiction of that murky thing, the choreographic process, is 18 hours long.”
How Pilobolus Survived A Nasty Midlife Crisis
“Plagued by internal strife and struggling to remain financially solvent, the company’s four artistic directors essentially decided [in 2004 that] they needed a boss” and hired an executive director. Five years (and the departure of one artistic director) later, “Pilobolus seems not only alive and well but galvanized by its efforts to reinvent itself.”
Pandora Tries To Decode The Genomes Of Music
The Internet radio service “has hired a bunch of ‘musicologists,’ who sit at computers and listen to songs, one at a time, rating them element by element, separating out what sometimes comes to hundreds of data points for a three-minute tune.” The company uses algorithms on this data to point a listener to music she might like, “minimizing the influence of other people’s taste.”
Paul Taylor Reveals The Secret Of Choreography
“‘How do you make a dance?’ Well, I get asked that so often that I just make up completely different answers each time. There are so many made-up answers, and they’re all lies.”