Month: March 2000

CRIME & PUNISHMENT

As part of Eastern Connecticut University’s “Alternative Restitution Program,” students committing infractions on campus may now choose their course of punishment; community service … or an opera performance. It’s hard to predict what results this program will have on its subjects, but it certainly can’t be the best way to send a positive message about the arts to young people. “This business of opera as punishment may be the worst thing to hit classical music since the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange, which juxtaposed Beethoven with coldblooded violence.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

END OF AN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE

The Boston Museum of Art sent out a letter to educators last week saying they would no longer be able to access the museum’s slide library for use in their classes. The slides, which are used in senior and community centers to educate the public about the MFA’s collection, are being stashed while the museum focuses its energies on putting digitized images on its Web site. A discouraged teacher laments, ending “‘rental privileges for slides from the MFA slide collection takes away our most valuable teaching tool, and the loss of this tool will result in the cancellation of many of our courses,”’ and possibly the loss of the 15,000 – 30,000 new MFA customers each year. – Boston Globe

A RESPONSIBLE ACTION?

Despite the fact that much rap music contains lyrics that are violent, degrading to women, Jews, whites and blacks, record labels have stood silently by while they have raked in millions of dollars from top-selling rap artists. Now Universal Music Group has told its “rap recording group the Murderers that it wouldn’t release their new album until they removed anti-police and anti-gay slurs from their lyrics.” If they’re being so responsible, some rappers have pointed out, why don’t they object to the “N-word”? – Los Angeles Times

SINGER X IN Y RECITAL

After Metropolitan Opera soprano Deborah Voigt cancelled her performance with the Y Music Society (which presents only one singer each season on its Carnegie Music Hall recital series) untested soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian filled in to take her place. The 25-year-old Canadian “is much in the news, in fact, as she will make her New York operatic debut this week in a concert version of Herold’s rarely-heard ‘Zampa.'” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

TRASH REVISITED

  • The Andy Warhol-era film “Trash,” which “epitomized what it meant to be hip,” has been resurrected, and with it the career of independent director Paul Morrissey who worked on several of Warhol’s films. – NPR 3/27/00 [Real audio file]