NPR’s Tom Huizenga talks with Washington Post critic Anne Midgette, Opera News editor F. Paul Driscoll, and fast-rising countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo.
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Forget Your Shrink! Try Bibliotherapy!
Alain de Botton’s School of Life in London has a “bibliotherapy” program that “matches individuals … with a list of books hand-selected to help them through tough times. You get your reading list after an initial consultation with a bibliotherapist in which you discuss your life, your reading history, and your problems.”
Lichtenstein’s Electric Cord, Stolen In 1970, Surfaces In Manhattan Warehouse
“A multimillion-dollar Roy Lichtenstein painting that disappeared 42 years ago has popped up in a Manhattan warehouse – and its owner is trying to make sure it doesn’t pull another vanishing act.”
Cuban Officials Shut Down Cabaret That Was Country’s ‘Largest Private Business’
“[When] President Raúl Castro urged Cubans to increase productivity by starting small businesses, [baritone Ulises] Aquino answered the call. He cleaned up a vacant, trash-strewn lot in Havana and built a restaurant and cabaret, El Cabildo, where his Opera of the Street could finally have a home. It was a big hit. And true to socialist principles, Aquino split earnings among his 130 employees, held free children’s theater on weekends and kept his prices low. But it didn’t last a year.”
Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller And the Power of Sound
A look at the couple who are perhaps today’s most prominent sound artists, with visits to their most recent work (described as “18 shoebox-size speakers and 4 subwoofers arranged discreetly in the underbrush [of a forest], with tree stumps to sit on”) and their most famous (Forty-Part Motet, based on Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium).
Keeping Ballet Alive In Kosovo
The Kosovo National Ballet was founded 40 years ago, during the Yugoslav days. It had to disband during the war-torn Milosevic era, but since Kosovo’s independence, dancers have revived the company and are keeping it going despite low pay and difficult conditions (such as a rehearsal room with a patched-up floor and only one smallish mirror).
The Aqualillies, Reviving Esther-Williams-Style Water Ballet
“Wearing vintage swimsuits and bathing caps, the Aqualillies look like performers from a bygone era. The group is made up of dancers who learned to swim, and synchronized swimmers who learned to dance.”
Why Don’t Donors Give The Corcoran Gallery Money? Nobody Asks
“The Corcoran’s woes are deep, complicated and decades old, but [one member’s] experience distills the essence of the problem: At critical moments, the gallery has repeatedly failed to make its own best case to even its best friends.”
Herbert Vogel, 89, Postal Worker Who Became Great Art Collector
“Unlike many collectors, the Vogels were not wealthy people. They lived and collected their entire lives on their salaries and their pensions. Mr. Vogel worked nights sorting mail at New York post offices, and his wife was a reference librarian in Brooklyn.”
Video Valentines To Mr. B
Author and former New York City Ballet dancer Toni Bentley writes of coming across YouTube tributes (which include some very rare images) to George Balanchine and to one of his first ballerinas, Tamara Toumanova – made by the latter’s first cousin thrice removed, a teenaged pianist in Tbilisi.