“The chief conductor of the Hungarian National Opera Adam Fischer has decided to step down, Hungarian media reported Monday, days after the opera’s director was fired over financial irregularities.” Fischer attributed his departure to government meddling.
Tag: 10.25.10
Black Swan Director Says Ballet World Is ‘Insular and Self-Involved’
Darren Aronofsky: “The ballet world was a very hard world to get into. Usually when you make a movie doors open up. You say, ‘I want to make a movie’ and everyone’s like ‘okay’. The ballet world just couldn’t care. They’re just very, very insular and self-involved.”
India’s Le Corbusier City Is Selling Off Its Corbusiers, Piece by Piece
Chandigarh was designed in great detail (down to furniture and manhole covers) by Le Corbusier according to his own master plan. Now “the purpose-built furniture that once filled the city’s chic public spaces is being systematically sold off in the auction rooms of London, New York and Paris.”
Garry Trudeau on the Future of Comic Strips
“No, we’re all in free-fall together. And Web comics don’t seem to be an alternative, unless you’re uninterested in making a living. There are so many entertainment alternatives to comics now, I’m not sure they’ll be much missed.”
Louis XIV Descendant Goes to Court to Remove Murakami Works From Versailles
Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme “is seeking a court order to halt a radical contemporary exhibition by Takashi Murakami in the royal apartments at Versailles because it sullied ‘supreme good French taste’.”
Chad Deity and Ragtime Lead Chicago’s Jeff Awards
“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a wrestling-themed drama by Kristoffer Diaz, scored a knockout Monday night at the 42nd annual round of the Joseph Jefferson Awards,” taking five trophies. “The Jeff Committee … also liked the Drury Lane’s production of Ragtime, which sashayed to eight Jeffs, the most of any show this year.”
The Glory of Tree Bark: A Photographic Tribute
“Photographer Cedric Pollet travels the world, barking up trees for a living. Like this peeling orange-red madrone found on the west coast of North America … Or this manzanita, a small evergreen from California … Or this rainbow eucalyptus located in the Philippines …”
The African Religion That Dare Not Speak Its Name
“There is a great thudding taboo in any discussion of Africa. Western journalists and aid workers see it everywhere, yet it is nowhere in our coverage back home. … The suppressed topic? The African belief in spirits and spells and ancestors and black magic. … They are at the core of many Africans’ understanding of themselves and the world.”
The Importance of Angels in America: Playwrights Speak
Sarah Ruhl: “Tony Kushner made people feel that going to the theater was a way of engaging in this incredible aesthetic, political, civic, historical event.” Lisa Kron: “Angels put us at the center of the intellectual universe as gay people.” Doug Wright: “What Tony did was write a play where being gay was a metaphor for the whole human experience.”
Gary Shteyngart, Back in Russia
“While [he] is a rising literary star in New York, he is a nobody in Russia, selling fewer translations of his books here than in Belgium. … Russia does not like to celebrate the achievements of its wayward sons, often eyeing them with suspicion and even envy. Mr. Shteyngart said that some of the reviews of his work by Russian critics could be summarized as ‘Balding traitor betrays homeland’.”