Boston continues on its arts-building ways with a new plan to rennovate the old Paramount Theatre. “The $70 million Paramount Center project would redevelop the Theater District landmark and two neighboring properties to provide two theaters, rehearsal rooms, student residences, and restaurant space.”
Month: April 2005
Who Owns Our Musical Heritage?
Recent cases concerning the release of older recordings and the editing of ancient music have thrown the ownership of our musical heritage in danger. “Hardly a month passes without someone in a black gown having to lay down the law on matters so fluid they might be more fittingly served in a saloon bar. At stake is our access to musical heritage and unless some judge draws a line in the sand pretty soon we could all go blundering back to ignorance and deprivation.”
What Defines A Modern Painting?
“It used to be so simple: a painting was the mediated result of an artist’s application of wet paint on a flat surface. No more. Having absorbed high culture and low, painting has turned itself out in mixed-media assemblages that include both organic and synthetic materials and occasionally involve photography and digital printing. It has borrowed from commercial illustration and architectural, tattoo, and textile design, and exhibited itself as sculpture or in various combinations of all the above, in both abstraction and representation. At this point, even those distinctions seem quaint.”
Pavarotti Cancels Due To Health
Pavarotti has caneled upcoming concerts. “Pavarotti’s spokesperson said he had been forced to move the dates as a consequence of recent neck surgery to repair two vertebrae. The opera star was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York on 9 March for the neck operation, described as “routine and regular”.
La Scala Backer Threatens Funding
The businessman who abruptly quit as president of the La Scala orchestra Monday has said he was disgusted with the opera house’s unions. “Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of the Mediaset media conglomerate, also said the company might withdraw its financing of the orchestra. In an interview at Mediaset’s Rome offices, Mr. Confalonieri said the company had paid at least $700,000 a year for Sunday-morning concert broadcasts on one of its channels.”
La Scala As An Opera (Conductors And Villains And Critics, Oh My!)
The mess at La Scala with Riccardo Muti is worthy of an opera plot. To wit: “The town square at dusk: Muti, hair shorn, is to be executed. “There is only one way to work with Muti: his way,” sings Norman Lebrecht as he knits beside the guillotine. “The relationship between Muti and the orchestra is sick,” sings a musician. “Only death can cure this illness.” Meli and Confalonieri rush to try to free their hero, but are cut down by scythe-wielding peasants; Mrs Muti throws herself off the battlements; Franco Zeffirelli and Norman Lebrecht sing of their triumph; the chorus of La Scala hum the opening bars of On the Town. Before he is executed, Muti utters the immortal words – “I should have taken that bloody job with the New York Philharmonic.” He dies. Curtain.”
London’s Painting Boom
Contemporary painting is hot in London right now. “The popularity of painting often coincides with boom periods of art buying – the last time people spoke of painting as being “big”, for instance, was during the 1980s. New collectors, in particular, attracted to a buoyant art market, tend to go for paintings. Their ease of display, combined with their historical legacy and their aura of originality and uniqueness, means that paintings are unrivalled not as works of art, but as commodities. Perhaps the best way to view the current status of painting, then, is not so much as an artistic phenomenon, but as an economic one.”
NJ Symphony Defers Instrument Loan
“The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has deferred payment on part of a $9.18 million loan it took out in 2003 to purchase a collection of 30 rare Italian stringed instruments. The state Economic Development Authority yesterday granted the orchestra’s request to pay only interest on the loan for nine months, beginning next month. In exchange, the orchestra agreed to a lien on $366,000 of its endowment fund.”
Is Hong Kong Culture Misfiring?
Hong Kong is trying to be a cultural hub. But are the government’s efforts to develop the city’s creative sector backfiring? Some critics say the state investment in culture lacks a long-range plan…
Russian Theatre Cranks Up The Heat
“Back in bad old Soviet times, the Kirov Ballet and the Moscow Circus seemed to be the only representatives of Russian culture on Western radar screens. But in the 15 years since the Iron Curtain was unhooked from the rigging and stored backstage, dozens of Russian theater companies have traveled around the globe, and much of the globe has rolled its way across Russia’s stages.”