The president of the orchestra of La Scala has resigned, a week after Riccardo Muti quit the company. Fedele Confalonieri, “who is also president of Mediaset, a broadcaster controlled by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, gave no explanation for his departure in a brief statement released by his company.”
Month: April 2005
Music In Progress leaked To Internet
More and more, musicians are finding recordings of music they’re still working on leaked on the internet. “Because of internet leaks, artists don’t have control of their own music anymore. There is a lot of material to be honed and worked on — and some of it is very, very bad. There is a reason why artists don’t want people to hear it.”
Chicago Art Institute To Expand
The Art Institute of Chicago is acquiring land next to its current building so it can build a 230,000 square foot addition. “Art Institute officials last year placed the cost of the addition at $198 million, more than half of which they had already raised. They also planned to raise another $87 million for an endowment for the addition, which according to district documents will house modern, contemporary, Asian, Islamic and architectural collections. About 65,000 square feet would be dedicated to gallery space and another 15,300 square feet will be dedicated to educational programs.”
How Do You Measure TV?
“For the past decade or so, watching television in America has been defined by the families recruited by Nielsen Media Research who have agreed to have an electronic meter attached to their televisions or to record in a diary what shows they watch. This setup may not last much longer. Just as programmers and advertisers are clamoring for a better understanding of the television audience, a wave of new consumer products has made it increasingly difficult to satisfy them.”
American U’s Fall Back In Programming Competition
“American universities — once the dominant force in the information technology world — fell far down the ranks in a widely watched international computer programming contest held this week. Asian and Eastern European schools have been scoring increasingly well in the world championship. A U.S. school hasn’t won since 1997, when students at Harvey Mudd College proved best.”
ReganBooks To LA
Judith Regan says she’s moving her publishing and media group from Manhattan and relocating to Los Angeles. “In doing so, ReganBooks, which is part of HarperCollins, which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, would be one of the few major book imprints to be based outside Manhattan and one of the first to leave New York for the West Coast. The move could shake up an industry that has long operated in a parochial, Manhattan-centric fashion, even as technology has made the location of a company less important.”
Sony BMG Restructures Classical Recording Business
Sony BMG says it is restructuring its classical music business under the name Sony BMG Masterworks. “It is intended not only to evoke past glories – Masterworks was CBS’s flagship classical line long before Sony bought the company from CBS in 1989 – but also to signal a renewed commitment to the core classical repertory.”
Has Opera Lost Its Personality?
Lisa Saffer on what’s wrong with today’s opera world: “I think the business has shifted recently: money speaks more than it should, and that means taking safe choices: people have become too afraid of making mistakes. Singers get talked at the whole time and coached within an inch of their lives – and the result is a passivity which depresses me. There’s plenty of polish around, but the rough edges which give the music character are being ironed out. We need more singers with something of their own to say, singers who engage spontaneously with the music.”
Judith Regan – The Angriest Publisher In New York?
Judith Regan is “arguably the most successful publisher in the world today, she runs a small imprint with a huge hit rate. So far this year, ReganBooks – part of the HarperCollins empire – has notched up 11 titles in the New York Times bestseller list, including four number ones in the space of six weeks. Even her critics describe her as the smartest woman in publishing. And yet they also have a few more superlatives for her, including the “angriest woman in the media” and – if Vanity Fair magazine is to be believed – a strong candidate for the nastiest person in New York.”
Mona Lisa In Her New Home
The Mona Lisa gets a new gallery home of her own, and crowds throng to the Louvre. “The Mona Lisa is not so much “hung” on its special wall as set, like a jewel, within it. With its stylishly brushed sgraffito surroundings, at once bare and luxurious, and its solitary magnificence behind glass, it’s for all the world like a watch in Cartier’s window. You need to be in the right frame of mind, but you can, for the first time in my memory, get a decent acquaintance with the Mona Lisa. Intimacy, even. So it’s finally possible to ask yourself critically: is she worth it?”