“You could say that classical music has sex on the brain, which, as D H Lawrence said, is a very bad place to have it. Bad or not, it makes for something jarringly out of tune with current notions of sexiness. How on earth can you combine the sublimated, secret yearnings of Brahms’s chamber music with the up-front sexiness of, say, Bond? The short answer is, you can’t. They belong to different worlds. It would be like adding lip gloss to the Mona Lisa.”
Month: April 2005
ENO’s Mixed Bag
Paul Daniel is leaving as music director of the English National Opera. “It has been eight years of musical and theatrical striving, and the results have ranged from epoch-making highs to disappointing lows. He bows out of ENO conducting the final opera of Wagner’s Ring, a gesture that should be climactically valedictory, but instead seems oddly flat, having been, on the whole, a critical flop.”
Oprah To Publish Books
Oprah has decided to launch a series of hardback books spun off from stories from her magazine. “The deal with Oxmoor reflects continued audience growth for Ms. Winfrey and her feel-good message directed mainly at women. Ratings for her daily talk show are the highest they’ve been in years. The May issue of the magazine, which will mark the its fifth anniversary, will be packed with 200-plus pages of ads–a record for the title.”
Turning Around The Met
The Metropolitan Opera has been struggling. “As the 2004-5 season enters the homestretch, the Met’s box office has been running at roughly 10 per cent lower than it did before 9/11, when more than 90 percent of the hall’s 3,800 seats were regularly filled. Although nothing short of Armageddon would keep local opera fans away, many out-of-towners for whom a visit to New York used to be unthinkable without a pilgrimage to Broadway and 65th Street have apparently found that they can lead a perfectly happy life by spending the same amount of money on, say, a beach in the Caribbean. Even at a time when the dollar is down, going to the Met remains an expensive habit; once broken, it’s easily kicked.” But there’s reason for hope…
Why E.E. Cummings Matters
“In the long revolt against inherited forms that has by now become the narrative of 20th-century poetry in English, no poet was more flamboyant or more recognizable in his iconoclasm than E.E. Cummings. By erasing the sacred left margin, breaking down words into syllables and letters, employing eccentric punctuation, and indulging in all kinds of print-based shenanigans, Cummings brought into question some of our basic assumptions about poetry, grammar, sign, and language itself, and he also succeeded in giving many a typesetter a headache. That said, determining Cummings’ influence and his present stature in the poetry world calls for a more measured view.”
Where To Sit In The British Library?
Finding a seat in the British Library is getting difficult. “It had always been the case that the British Library kept users down to manageable levels through a series of polite, but formidable, barriers. You were interviewed, and had to demonstrate a need to use the library. A reader’s ticket was, one understood, a scholar’s privilege, not a citizen’s right. Above all, the BL was at pains to keep at bay London University’s 100,000 students. But, in the last few months, undergraduates have suddenly been made very welcome. Word of mouth means more are streaming in every day. Why is the British Library now Liberty Hall? Bums on seats is mission statement 2005. And, if there are more bums than seats, it’s hard luck for the seat-less.”
Nice Building. What’s It For, Again?
The San Francisco Conservatory is moving into a beautiful new building and hopes to raise its national profile and become recognized as one of the world’s top training ground for classical musicians. But it’s difficult to escape the elephant in the room: with classical music widely viewed to be on the decline, what sort of professional world will exist for today’s conservatory students after graduation?
NEA Scales Back Plans For Traveling Exhibition
“The National Endowment for the Arts has scaled back a new initiative to send the best of American culture around the country and is starting with only a tour of visual arts. Earlier plans included dance and music components.” President Bush had asked Congress to approve $18 million for the “American Masterpieces” project, but legislators only appropriated $2 million, necessitating the cuts.
How About A Pope For The Rest of Us?
“For those of us who came to Manhattan precisely because you’re guaranteed never to meet anyone who has read the Left Behind series, America’s much-celebrated spiritual revival can have its trying moments.” But even the jaded and secular Tina Brown has to admit that Catholicism has made itself look awfully alluring over the weeks since the death of Pope John Paul II. But the election of Cardinal Ratzinger has sent what remains of the ‘religious left’ scurrying right back into hiding. “Secularists, humanists and quiet worshipers of an unpoliticized God have felt beleaguered, frustrated and unfairly disrespected. There’s no energy on the non-zealot side of the cultural debate. There’s no Voltaire, no Clarence Darrow, not even a Lenny Bruce to balance the stifling, censorious religiosity.”
Is There Anything Not Being Added to A Cell Phone?
Several techno-savvy companies are banding together to explore the possibility of combining FM radio and cell phone technology to entice a new generation of consumers to re-embrace radio. “The technology would combine the traditional over-the-air FM broadcast — through a receiver included in the phone — with text and graphics displayed on the phone’s screen. Those text-and-graphics images could be coordinated with the broadcast — to display the title of a song and the name of the artist, for example — or provide information such as concert schedules, allow the user to buy ring tones from the artist or participate in radio station contests.”