In a move that stunned the music world, the Philadelphia Orchestra has announced that music director Christoph Eschenbach will leave his post when his contract expires after the 2007-08 season. At five years, Eschenbach’s aborted tenure in Philadelphia will rank as the shortest any music director there has ever had.
Tag: 10.21.06
The Museum Of Light And Beauty
Paris’s newly restored Musée des Arts is a far cry from the dark, dingy place it used to be. “Radical decisions were made, bold steps were taken. While architects worked out how to open up the space, bringing in light and air, a team of curators settled down to choose the best 6,000 objects to put on permanent display… The result is a collection that positively shines with its own good fortune.”
Who Will Prop Up Canada’s Homegrown Art Market?
When Canadian über-collector Kenneth Thomson died last spring, it marked the end of an era for Canada. Now, many are wondering who will step in to fill Thomson’s considerable void. “Buyers and dealers speculate about what will happen to the structure of the market with the removal of one of its pillars… No dealer is going to risk offending clients by naming them or telling them more is demanded of them. But while big fish prefer to move under the water, they cannot help but leave ripples in their wake.”
Blynded By The Ivory Towers?
Last week, the University of Minnesota announced with much fanfare that it would pay $750,000 to acquire the personal archive of author Robert Bly. But at least one observer says the acquisition is yet another example of academia’s disconnect from truly good writing. “The literature and creative writing departments of our universities deserve a lot of the blame for this. For decades now, they’ve lavished praise and professorships on authors who dress up tedium with tortured syntax and mystical posturing, the sort who — like Bly — promulge the stereotype that contemporary literature is a pursuit suited only for pseudo-intellectuals in silly vests who go into raptures at the prospect of yet another eight page description of a snowy day.”
Decorating The City
Public art is suddenly the hottest thing on Toronto’s cultural scene. “Long forgotten are the political battles of the ’60s that confronted the installation of Henry Moore’s The Archer in Nathan Phillips Square. In such a media-intense city as we are now, a public display of significant contemporary art is seen as an innovative and necessary way to ornament existing urban space. And unlike the oversized bronze statues of a century ago, you don’t necessarily need space on the ground, either.”
The Coming Wave Of Chinese Novels
China’s publishing industry is expanding at a startling rate, and “many consider the greatest loophole in Chinese-English publishing efforts to be contemporary Chinese voices in English.” As such, Western publishers are lining up to translate the works of China’s top young writers.
Reality Theatre
“With an election imminent, political theater is everywhere in New York. Some of it is broad and partisan, [and] some of it is more subtle, aiming at issues rather than personalities. Some of it even aspires to be work you could stand to watch years from now, when the current administration and its troubles are in the history books.”
Pinter’s Last Hurrah
A new production of Samuel Beckett’s play, Krapp’s Last Tape, starring an unmistakably weak and ailing Harold Pinter “has been hailed by British reviewers both as a triumphant final hurrah for Mr. Pinter and as a lean and compelling performance by an actor-playwright whose own plays draw heavily on broken language, pauses, silence… Mr. Pinter is now 76, and has battled cancer of the esophagus. He said last year that he would not write any more plays, so there was an inevitable sense of valediction.”
Lyric Back On The Air And Fully Funded
Lyric Opera of Chicago has found a sponsor for its radio broadcasts through the 2011-12 season. Lyric has been off the air for four years, but returns to local and syndicated radio this Saturday night. The donor making the series possible is a Chicago-area developer whose net worth is estimated at $3 billion.
And Some Opera Singers Look A Lot Like An Offensive Line
Most people in the arts assume that there just isn’t a lot of crossover between the core audiences for high culture and professional sports. But honestly, football really isn’t all that different from opera, right? …no, really! “The crowd is better behaved at the opera, [but] there are moments watching both that make my spine tingle… Second-guessing plays a big role in both the football and opera experiences. By halftime of the game or intermission of the opera, almost everybody has become a critic.”