“[T]he art show titled ‘Work:Fragment’ gathers 70 works by artists such as Ingres, Cézanne, Degas, Delacroix, Kandinsky, Klee, Giacometti and Picasso alongside scores from Wagner, Bartók and Varèse and works by writers from the 19th and 20th centuries.” The program, the first at the Louvre ever to be curated by a musician, also includes 11 live and six filmed concerts.
Tag: 11.06.08
Latest Candidate For The Strad Secret: Mushrooms
“A Swiss researcher said Thursday he had hit on an unlikely way of recreating the unique sound of a Stradivarius violin – by treating the wood of a replica instrument with mushrooms.”
Researchers: Novelists Best Academics In Explaining World
“Fiction – including poetry – should be taken just as seriously as facts-based research, according to the team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics (LSE). Novels should be required reading because fiction ‘does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does,’ said Dr Dennis Rodgers from Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty Institute.”
Playwrights’ XX Chromosomes A Barrier To The Stage
“Let’s call this drama: Many Women Playwrights in Search of a Stage. Because if you write plays and have the wrong chromosomes, you’re in for a lot of frustration in New York.” A meeting on the issue last week at New Dramatists moved the conversation forward, but just barely.
Citing Economy, St. Louis Art Museum Delays Expansion
“The St. Louis Art Museum has decided to delay the groundbreaking of its $125 million expansion. The museum’s Board of Commissioners cited the current financial markets for the move.”
Musical In The Heights Bound For Silver Screen
“Flush from the global returns of ‘Mamma Mia!,’ Universal Pictures is tuning up another stage musical transformation. The studio has acquired rights to turn the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical ‘In the Heights’ into a feature.”
Critic Extraordinaire John Leonard, 69
The writer whom Kurt Vonnegut called “the smartest man who ever lived” died Wednesday night of lung cancer. He began his career monitoring the left-wing press for National Review; he gave Pauline Kael her start at Pacifica Radio; from 1971-75 he served as editor of The New York Times Book Review, where he was an early champion of Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Gabriel García Marquez; he wrote about books for The New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly and Salon.com, among “countless other publications”; he was even a television critic for CBS and New York magazine.
Fort Worth Opera to Premiere Before Night Falls
“The Fort Worth Opera has announced it will stage the world premiere of Before Night Falls, a new opera by Cuban American composer Jorge Martin, as the centerpiece of its 2010 Opera Festival. Before Night Falls is based on the autobiography of Cuban dissident poet Reinaldo Arenas, whose memoir by the same name was made into a 2000 film starring Javier Bardem.”
What Killed Opera Pacific?
“[T]hroughout its life span, Opera Pacific was rarely on firm footing. Its financial structure was never that solid from the start. […] Attendance was not really the problem, though that could have been improved… the pool of donors to the company was much too small. More like a puddle.”
Switzerland Returns 4,400 Stolen Antiquities To Italy
“The items, taken from archeological sites in the eastern Italian region of Apulia and in northern Italy, were found in the possession of a married couple who are Basel-based art dealers.”