“While bombs rip through buildings, rival factions assassinate each other’s leaders, and increasingly brutal occupation and resistance forces duke it out, Iraqi artists are playing it safe. This is in contrast to the art scene under sanctions, when poignant tableaux spoke of the suffering of a populace under siege, playwrights pushed the political envelope with veiled criticisms of the ancient regime’s corruption, and composers wrote angry orchestral anthems with damning titles like “To the U.N.” (which was, after all, the embargo enforcer).”
Tag: 12.07.03
Interpret Away…(or not)
“Unlike sculpture, music is inevitably different in every manifestation,” writes David Patrick Stearns. “Whether huge or minute, those differences can be charted, albeit simplistically, on a continuum between two poles: objective to subjective in some parlance, classical to romantic in another. Is the conductor a conduit of the composer? Or a prism? Not everybody falls squarely into one of these camps, and when someone does, it’s not an everyday thing. Sometimes, the most freewheeling musician turns out to be anything but.”
Fenice Rises Again In Venice
“Like its namesake, the phoenix, La Fenice has finally risen from the ashes. The whole saga has resembled one of those long, tumultuous operas in which everything turns out more or less all right in the final act. Next Sunday, in the presence of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Italian president, La Fenice reborn will open its doors. Yet even now, this is a reopening without opera.” There will be an opening week of concerts, and then the doors will “close again until Nov. 12, 2004, when Lorin Maazel will conduct a new production of “La Traviata.”
Kimmelman: Start Over With WTC Memorial
Michael Kimmelman believes that all the candidates for the WTC memorial ought to be thrown out. “This is in part a memorial to extreme bravery in the face of overwhelming force. Here’s a chance to be brave. We know you still haven’t presented your winning choice, which will no doubt be modified from the plans we now see. But don’t bother. Nothing short of extreme, last-ditch action has a chance of succeeding, because the process has been crucially flawed from the start. Instead of beginning with a firm idea about the meaning of the memorial, we started with a timetable. Instead of guaranteeing that the best artists and architects participated in the process, we pandered to the crowd.”
National Music Museum Planned For DC
A National Music Museum in Washington DC has been talked about for 11 years. Now, the group working on the project pledges to open it in five years. “The group has already helped raise $5 million and is now committed to raising $100 million to fund the $200 million project.”
Robbins: Dissent=Patriotism
Actor Tim Robbins has a new play opening in Los Angeles. He says that “being lambasted as un-American” for his outspoken views on the Iraq war has been “tough to swallow. Despite his radical rep, he actually sees his penchant for democratically sanctioned dissent as every bit as all-American as his love of baseball. He says his moral compass has always guided him toward saying and doing what he thinks is right, to speaking the truth when he sees hypocrisy in the world, and he has trouble understanding why so many people take issue with the simple logic of his frankness.”
In Dallas – The Litton Years
Critic Scott Cantrell assesses Andrew Litton’s tenure as director of the Dallas Symphony, and ponders what the orchestra might look for in his successor: “Mr. Litton certainly energized the DSO and raised its profile in the community. He took the orchestra on three European tours and conducted it in four concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall. In an era when union contracts largely priced American orchestras out of the recording market, he and the DSO turned out an amazing 23 CDs. As time wore on, musicians, local cognoscenti and critics grumbled about a lack of depth.”
Saddled By The Vietnam Memorial Cliche
The Vietnam Memorial was a revolution in thinking about memorials. “Twenty-one years later, the wall of names has become a visual cliche and memorial designers are straining to reach the profound synthesis of form and meaning that the Vietnam memorial so eloquently achieved. The finalists in the World Trade Center memorial competition have many of the superficial attributes of the Vietnam Memorial — the stark materials, the abstract vocabulary, the striving for elemental simplicity. Yet at this point, they are simply Maya Lin wannabes, not the real thing.”
Bidding War For Goodspeed Opera
The Goosdspeed Opera House has reliably prospered for 127 years in its present Connecticut home. “But now the theater is considering building a new stage in nearby Middletown, a re-energized small industrial city that has offered the Goodspeed the moon in exchange for a share of its star power. The Goodspeed’s leaders were surprised and impressed by the town’s offer, which includes a $5 million grant, expedited permitting and free land downtown.”
Perry Wins Turner Prize
Pottery artist Grayson Perry has won this year’s Turner Prize. “Perry accepted the award in a dress, as his female alter-ego Claire, thanked his wife and said he was ‘stunned’. A popular choice among the public, he beat off competition from the favourites, the Chapman brothers.”