“The Roman Catholic drama Doubt leads contenders for the Screen Actors Guild Awards with five nominations, including honours for Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis.”
Tag: 12.18.08
The Cultural Stasis Of Italian Bureaucracy
“A half-dozen structural revamps of [Italy’s] culture ministry during the last decade haven’t really done much except to shuffle around the burden of a creaky and defensive bureaucracy. The country is paralyzed by contradictions. Italians say they identify deeply with their cultural patrimony, but they actually don’t visit their museums much. They talk about collective Italian artistic heritage but remain, at heart, profoundly divided by ancient regional differences… differences that fracture cultural policies.”
Broadway’s Most Dysfunctional Show?
“After months of backstage turbulence, capped by the loss of its leading actor and the ascent of an understudy into the title role, the Broadway revival of Pal Joey opens on Thursday night… Several people involved with [the production] said in interviews that this Pal Joey seemed destined to enter theater lore as one of the more artistically troubled experiences of Broadway in recent years.”
MOCA Board Divided
MOCA’s board of trustees will spend Thursday trying to decide between two options for its future: a merger with LACMA, or a bailout from billionaire Eli Broad. “The lack of a clear direction and uncertainty over who will end up running the museum have stymied additional outsiders from making a firm commitment to help the museum… [and] a change in leadership looks more and more probable.”
Winnie-the-Pooh Auction Sets Sales Record
“A collection of EH Shepard’s original drawings for the Winnie the Pooh children’s books has fetched £1.26m ($1.92m )at auction, in London.” The auction broke the previous record for a Shepard drawing when one of the artist’s best-loved drawings went for £115,250 ($176,041).
Cuba’s Harold Gramatges, 90
“The outstanding composer and pianist Cuban Harold Gramatges died on Tuesday at the age of 90 in Havana city… Gramatges, an important pillar of contemporary music in Latin America, remained active until the last of his days.”
Starting From Scratch
David Handel was an unlikely individual to popularize orchestral music in Bolivia – American-born, classically trained, and possessed of almost no knowledge of the country he arrived in back in 1997. “The National Symphony Orchestra he was hired to remake was a shambles — it had no concert hall, generated little public interest and was barely able to muster seven or eight sparsely attended concerts a year and pay its musicians a few dollars per performance.” Today, it’s a whole different story.
Virginia Symphony Gets A Loan To Stay Afloat
The cash-strapped Virginia Symphony Orchestra is breathing a sigh of relief today, after Norfolk officials agreed to provide the ensemble with a $500,000 lifeline. “The terms include repayment with 6 percent interest over five years,” and the VSO says the loan will enable it to make it to the end of the fiscal year without declaring bankruptcy.
What Happened To No Such Thing As Bad Publicity?
“This weekend, dozens of dancers in brilliant costumes will leap across the stage of [Philadelphia’s] Merriam Theater, before digitally projected Chinese landscapes. An orchestra will perform original scores melding Western and Chinese instruments; the violin will befriend the two-string erhu.” A great cross-cultural experience? Not if you’re the Chinese government. China’s Communist Party “has called the production ‘an insult and distortion’ of [its] culture.”
Celebrate Obama’s Inauguration, Maazel Style
“New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel and his wife are offering their country estate in Virginia for $50,000 a night during the presidential inauguration. The Rappahannock County estate can accommodate up to 50 guests. The complex includes a spa facility with a large heated swimming pool, a Turkish steam room and a Finnish sauna. Guests also can use a theater room with a commercial-size movie screen, along with a bowling alley and a petting zoo.”