Florida Grand Opera Floats A Recovery Plan

“Opera leaders say they can’t go on cannibalizing their own operation. Full-time administrative staff is down from 40 people to 18. This season’s budget is just $8.6 million. To get through the season at that level, FGO has resorted to cost-saving strategies such as borrowing set and costumes for Butterfly from the Sarasota Opera, where Danis used to be director.”

Stephen Hawking As You Don’t Know Him (Yet)

“If Hawking didn’t exist in real life, a canny screenwriter might have invented him: A sly physics genius who slacked his way through life until given a death sentence, an atheist who wooed and won a devout Anglican co-ed as his wife, a prisoner of his own body whose quicksilver mind let him transcend the heavens above: He is a metaphor in waiting, a real-life inspirational hero finally getting his Hollywood close-up.”