Tag: 10.28.04

Major Shakeup At Adelaide

The entire upper management team of Australia’s Adelaide Symphony Orchestra has resigned just a few weeks before the ensemble launches its much-anticipated Ring cycle. Tempers had reportedly flared at Adelaide in recent weeks over the management’s plan to combat persistent deficits by replacing full-time players with part-time freelancers. The orchestra’s outgoing chairman took a shot at the federal government for what he calls the “persistent underfunding” of the ASO.

Breslin: My Life With The Big Man

SuperAgent Herbert Breslin sits down with Norman Lebrecht: “Breslin in his prime would play the media and the music business like a fairground accordionist, simultaneously squeezing and stroking to pump out hullabaloo. He could be tiresomely obscene or irresistibly comic – Puck to Pavarotti’s Bottom – but there never any doubt of his driving passion. He might have made a bigger career in showbiz, but Breslin was devoted heart and soul to vocal beauty, and to Pavarotti as its supreme exponent.”

UN Creates Culture Warriors (Peacekeepers)

The United Nations is setting up an international force prepared to fly in and protect culture treasures threatened by war or natural disaster. “The cultural blue berets, as they are already being called, will initially be formed entirely of Italians and could include members of Italy’s paramilitary police, the carabinieri. Yesterday’s move followed international outrage over the looting of priceless antiquities during the US-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq last year.”

For Sale: Broadway Dress-up

Broadway’s Theater Development Fund “began selling 20,000 costumes from its collection of nearly 85,000 in preparation for a move to a smaller space. The nonprofit Theater Development Fund, perhaps best known for its low-cost TKTS booth at Times Square, runs arts education programs and rents professional costumes at discounts to nonprofit theater groups and schools nationwide. Much of the development fund’s inventory comprises donations from the Metropolitan Opera, Broadway and private collections.”

Oscars: The Year Of No Buzz

It’s been such a lacklustre year for movies there’s little buzz about which movies might contend for Oscars. “Most years, November and December bring a number of sweeping epics and ambitious dramas to woo Oscar voters, but this year only a few such films are left to open before the end of the year.”

Rachmaninoff Manuscript Found

Lost for 100 years, the manuscript of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony surfaces. “The first four pages of music have at some stage become detached and are missing, as is a title page – hence, perhaps, the fact that it has remained unidentified for so long. Most of the final page, on which there might have been a date and signature, has also gone astray. But the handwriting, the paper and the manner in which Rachmaninov made corrections – all are as they should be.”