It’s been eight months since actor Henry Goodman wqas fired after taking over Nathan Lane’s role in “The Producers.” “One minute, I was in the shower singing, thinking, `I just played to 60,000 people in a month, nobody’s asked for their money back, this thing is cooking. I knew I was different from Nathan, but I didn’t know difference was a sackable offense.” Now, after months of soul-searching, he’s back on Broadway in a big way…
Tag: 12.22.02
Imagining The Manhattan Skyline
Some of the ideas for rebuilding on the World Trade Center site come straight from fantasy. “At least four of them propose to build the tallest building in the world. And the designs are not only tall. Towers tilt and dance at weird angles as they rise. Often they’re linked by bridges in the sky, in the best tradition of your favorite Flash Gordon comic book. This isn’t exactly avant-garde architecture.” So what’s real?
Ground Zero Solution
Blair Kamin believes that one of the seven proposals for the World Trade Center site stands above the others. “Libeskind’s plan for the former World Trade Center site at once offers a deeply moving memorial to those who died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a joyous but dignified celebration of New York’s street life and skyline.”
WTC – Why Not Dream?
“If the architects have exceeded the design study’s requirements, we should be grateful. They’ve helped to expose a major defect of the entire design process thus far: the attempt to contain architecture within such restrictive boundaries that it cannot perform its legitimate poetic function.”
Will Baz Boheme Spoil Opera For Those Who Already Love Opera?
Anthony Tommasini is impressed by the glare and glitter of Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway Boheme. “Yet from a musical perspective, many veteran opera buffs will be dismayed, as I was, by the compromises the production has made. Newcomers to opera who think they are experiencing the real thing are not. For all the dazzle and heart of this Broadway “Bohème,” I sat through three shows (to see the three pairs of rotating leads) getting more and more glum about the future of opera. Will traditional companies that play by the rules be able to keep up as the public embraces amplified opera on Broadway?”
Do DVD’s Threaten CD Sales? Let’s Do The Numbers…
“There’s a growing sense in the music industry that DVD sales are surpassing those of CDs. In response, many music retailers have expanded their DVD selection, and even begun displaying hit movie titles along side the best-selling albums. In response, record companies have begun to rely on DVDs to assist their own marketing efforts — not only by developing more features for music video releases, but by using DVDs to cross-promote tours and new releases, or as sales-boosting bonuses. The effort is beginning to pay off, too.”
Christmas Music…Looking For The Good Stuff
“Christmas, like weddings, brings out people’s worst tastes. Houses are bedizened with too many garish lights, lawns cluttered with blow-up Santas and snowmen. Mall Muzak drills “Jingle Bell Rock,” perhaps the nadir of Western music, into our protesting brains. It’s hard to know if the insult is greater to devout Christians or those of other beliefs.” But there is great Christmas music… plenty of it…
Remembering a Visionary Of American Opera
“John Crosby, who died Dec. 15 at age 76, after a brief illness, was one of the great visionaries of American opera. Back in the 1950s he imagined a summer opera festival in what struck plenty of people as the very last place on Earth. He borrowed money from his father, a New York lawyer, to buy a 76-acre ranch on a hilltop just north of Santa Fe, N.M. And in July 1957, in a primitive hillside amphitheater, he inaugurated Santa Fe Opera by conducting ‘Madama Butterfly’.”
Getting Behind The Art-Theft Mentality
Stealing paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is an act that hurst us all. “How dare they? Why would they? Van Gogh is so famous, experts argue, the culprits probably will have difficulty selling the works for the millions they’re worth. Assuming this isn’t the more whimsical scenario of a team of genuine van Gogh fanatics, the audacity of the heist wildly overshadows the practical financial benefit. Yet, such thievery happens.”