After the outspoken novelist made some controversial remarks last month about the Indian government and its policies in Kashmir, a private citizen made a formal complaint accusing Roy of sedition. Delhi authorities have confirmed that they are taking action on the complaint.
Tag: 11.30.10
Musicals Need Less Big Spectacle, More Small-Scale Daring
“It’s not the public’s fault that we haven’t had a musical as shockingly pertinent as, say, West Side Story for so long. … But orchestras, chorus lines and dancers are now almost solely the domain of the Webber-style spectacle; put simply, nobody else can afford them. New productions by smaller theatres must depend instead on actor-musicians and a fair amount of inventiveness.”
Wagnerian Tenor Peter Hofmann Dead at 66
Hofmann made his name as a handsome Teutonic hero at the Bayreuth Festival. For well over a decade he sang Wagner’s leading tenor roles at most of the world’s great opera houses; in 1990 he began a new career playing the lead in the Hamburg production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera.
‘German Impressionist Painting’ Is Not a Contradiction in Terms
“Is there such a thing as German Impressionism? Didn’t everything begin in Paris with Manet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne and their colleagues? As the provocatively named ‘German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann – Corinth – Slevogt,’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, makes clear, the answer to both questions is an unequivocal ‘yes’.”
Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Caught Up in Minor Race Controversy
“A Hobbit casting agent who placed a newspaper advertisements seeking extras with ‘light skin tones’ has been sacked. Hobbit wannabe Naz Humphreys, who has Pakistani heritage, drew attention to the agent after she said she queued for three hours only to be told her skin tone wasn’t light enough.”
The Problematic Meaning of Chanukah
“Some time ago, a group of fanatics grew irritated and agitated by the lack of zeal demonstrated by some of their co-religionists, many of them wealthy and educated. A number of these non-zealots were assimilating at a fast pace into modern culture, becoming almost indistinguishable from the elite group that ran it.”
Bad Sex in Fiction Award: Rowan Somerville Beats Jonathan Franzen
The insect imagery in Somerville’s The Shape of Her was enough to defeat Franzen’s Freedom and a novel by former Tony Blair adviser Alastair Campbell. (The latter was disqualified for wanting to win.) Accepting the prize, Somerville said, “There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you.”
Have Guards Stopped Policing Behavior In Museums?
“It was then–and again later that evening when we witnessed further enactments of this same kind of warped prurient modesty/prudery in front of imposing ancient sculptures of male nude gods and mythic heroes–that I asked my husband, as much in disbelief as in indignation, how do the guards allow this?”
Another Collapse Of Ruins In Pompeii
“Less than a month after Pompeii’s so-called House of Gladiators collapsed into rubble, portions of a garden wall at the nearby House of the Moralist fell down on Tuesday, prompting new calls to better safeguard the city buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.”
What The New Picasso Trove Could Mean
“Whether they had been found in an attic in Pinner or in a bank vault in Switzerland, the discovery of 271 unknown works by Pablo Picasso would count as one of the most important cultural events of the year.”