“The Royal Shakespeare Company has declined to reimburse the Doctor Who fans who paid up to £48 each to see [series star] David Tennant play Hamlet but ended up with the actor’s understudy.”
Tag: 12.14.08
How Sweden’s Climate Changed The World Of Design
Harsh winters meant Swedes were traditionally forced to enjoy the indoors: furniture, rugs, glassware and ceramics become exceptionally important when it is 30 degrees below outside.” And Sweden’s egalitarian society “meant that when the first design movements began in the early last century, their appeals could be addressed to the whole population, not just a special interest group.”
The Taxman Cometh (To Salt Lake)
Utah’s Odyssey Dance Theatre has built up an unpaid liability of nearly $700,000 in payroll taxes and penalties over the past decade or so, even as it has continued to use federal and local funding to expand its programs rather than settle its public debts. Now (as with the rest of us), those debts are catching up with the company.
Swed To SF: MTT Is Worth Every Cent
The president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, angered by Michael Tilson Thomas’s $1.6M salary as an Francisco Symphony music director, wants to cut all of the city’s $1.8M funding to the orchestra. But, MTT having made the SFS into one of the world’s best orchestras, the question “is not how much MTT is worth but how many millions might it cost San Francisco to once more promote itself as a sophisticate city if a Philistine supervisor actually has his way?”
What’s So Bad About Peter Seiffert’s Earpiece?
The tenor is singing Wagner’s Tristan for the first time at the Met, and many opera lovers are tut-tutting at his use of an electronic earpiece to get cues from a prompter. “It has long been standard practice for an operatic artist who has prepared a role thoroughly to take cues from a house prompter. But does a singer cross a line by putting an electronic gizmo in his ear?”
What Do (And Don’t) We Lose When Companies Dance To Recordings?
“A few of us, though, have been living in such privileged conditions that it is still a shock to realize that live music is negotiable. This shock, I know, is illogical… [Yet you] need to be a regular dancegoer to know quite how much difference a conductor and orchestra can create between the same cast’s performances of the same ballet on Wednesday and on Thursday. Where there is taped music, sooner or later you’re likely to see taped dancing.”