A recent summit meeting of Minnesota nonprofit companies was a fairly dismal affair, with executives from the state’s biggest arts groups bemoaning the downturn in public and private financing. But at least one corner of the nonprofit sector is raking in the dough – in Minnesota, HMOs and other health care companies are non-profits, too. It makes for an interesting contrast, since the skyrocketing cost of health care is one of the factors causing so much suffering at the state’s larger arts groups.
Month: December 2003
The Savior Of Saint Louis?
David Robertson’s appointment as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra seems to be solidifying the notion that the SLSO, so recently on the brink of financial collapse, is back as a major player on the national orchestral scene. “A lot was riding on the identity of the new music director. The wrong conductor could have derailed the orchestra’s forward momentum, artistically and financially. But the right conductor – and there can be little doubt that Robertson’s the one – will build on what his predecessors left him and then help the orchestra on to even greater things.”
Putting Mahler In The Right Order
When Mahler wrote his almost unbearably bleak 6th symphony, he broke up the pervasive despair of the score with a beautiful, lush slow movement. Mahler originally intended the slow movement to be played just before the finale, but then switched it with the scherzo movement in the work’s first rehearsals. The new order remained the standard until 1963, after Mahler’s death, when the inner movements were flipped again, ostensibly because of ‘new scholarship’ on the work. “Now it has become clear that the transposition of movements was no mere mistake but a willful act of an editor, Erwin Ratz.”
The Power Of Small-Time Orchestras
Major symphony orchestras are cultural treasures, and a point of pride for the cities which have them. But for every big-budget, 95-member symphony orchestra, there are countless smaller, semi-professional orchestras performing across America, feeding the desire of ordinary concertgoers for an affordable night out listening to great music in a more casual setting than the big boys offer. “These orchestras truly live by their own rules, mixing classical and pops on the same program. They often flourish during tough economic times that bring larger orchestras down… At the very least, these orchestras offer the tactile experience of being in the same room with a masterpiece.”
Rigler, Classic Arts Showcase Founder, 88
Lloyd Rigler founded Classic Arts Showcase, an “eclectic television service that distributes performing arts films at no cost to public television stations. His Classic Arts Showcase, started in 1994, shows archival and contemporary film clips from all over the world, made available via satellite to an estimated 50 million homes. With its scenes from opera, ballet and early television, it has been called MTV for classical music fans.”
Pavarotti’s Wedding
Superstar tenor Luciano Pavarotti has married his longtime girlfriend, Nicoletta Mantovani, in a star-studded ceremony in Modena, Italy. Mantovani, at 34, is exactly half Pavarotti’s age, and the couple have a one-year-old daughter. The marriage took place in a theater, with the mayor of Modena presiding, and Andrea Bocelli performing the Ave Maria in front of an assemblage of celebrity guests.
Big Art = Big Box Office
Modern sculpture has become big box office. Not just any sculpture though. The great big oversized sculpture found recently in the enormous turbine room at Tate Modern. “None of these works are necessarily great art. They have nothing much to do with Moore or Donatello. They are made not of bronze or marble but of ignoble materials such as plastic and neon. But they fit triumphantly into the 21st-century urban scene.”
Won’t The Real Slim Shady Please Report To The FBI?
You may have missed it, what with the capture of Saddam Hussein and all the recent suicide bombings in Iraq, but rapper Eminem recently threatened the life of the President of the United States. Sort of. A line from an unfinished song off a bootleg recording of an Eminem concert reportedly includes the following: “I don’t rap for dead presidents. I’d rather see the president dead.” Of course, Eminem is just a pop musician in a frankly thuggish corner of the music industry, and he clearly isn’t planning an assasination attempt, so the Secret Service isn’t taking it seriously or responding to silly questions about it. Only, wait. Actually, they are.
I Don’t Get It – Why Is This Guy’s Art Suddenly Hot?
Painter John Currin is hot at the moment. But Blake Gopnik wonders why. “Within the art world, where Currin’s career and reputation have been forged, he can get praise as an original not because he’s doing anything new or special but simply because some vanguard curators and collectors don’t get out enough. It’s as though the elites of contemporary art are so engrossed in their own world that they’re not aware of what’s already going on in the American mainstream – at shopping malls, on boardwalks and in Sunday painting classes.”
Are Film Defections Hurting Theater?
As more veterans of the theatrical stage defect to Hollywood, establishing lucrative film careers, many in the theater world are lamenting the trend. But are stage actors really damaged goods the minute they appear on film? “Is [Judi] Dench less convincing as the Countess of Rossillion in All’s Well That Ends Well than, say, Peggy Ashcroft was, because the latter had avoided playing James Bond’s boss? Do [Ian] McKellen’s decades of speaking the greatest verse ever written help or hinder him and us when he starts spouting piffle about pixies chasing rings?”