In a culture with its own centuries-old, very strong and very different classical music traditions, European art music had only a tenuous toehold in the subcontinent. This situation is slowly but surely changing, with an increase in students and great improvements in teaching, notably in and around Delhi.
Month: May 2012
Bollywood Megastar’s Post-Baby Weight Gain Causes Huge Debate In India
The furor is over whether Aishwarya Rai, “the woman routinely referred to as the most beautiful in the world, and who occupies a place in Indian popular culture akin to Kate Middleton or Victoria Beckham, has an obligation to her fans to lose weight” six months after giving birth. Until relatively recently, Bollywood stars generally had healthy curves and hourglass figures.
A New Opera About One Of Australia’s Great Love-And-Murder Triangles
“Composer Gordon Kerry and librettist Louis Nowra describe Midnight Son as ‘An opera inspired by a true story’. That story is infamous: the murky, tragic tale of Maria Korp, her suburban Don Giovanni of a husband, Joe, and his murder-intent mistress, Tania Herman. Worse cases occur in opera, but perhaps not with quite the same disturbingly still-warm immediacy.”
How Much Money Is Really Being Spent In China’s Art Market? That’s Not Entirely Clear
“Was the 2011 joint turnover of the Chinese auction houses $154.2bn, $148.5bn, $88.1bn – or much less?”
Scotland’s Smaller Theatre Companies Beginning To Panic Over Planned Funding Changes
Creative Scotland, the country’s arts funding body, is discontinuing two-year supporting grants in favor of per-project awards. “Companies and individual practitioners are questioning whether they will be able to continue under the new regime, while there are warnings that individual artists will leave Scotland.”
Showing Contemporary Art In An Old French Convent
Supermarket magnate Michel-Edouard Leclerc “says that he hopes to transform the French public’s perception of contemporary art by opening a new gallery in a former 17th-century convent in Brittany this summer.”
Meet The One Man With Two Guv’nors
“Part of the secret of [James] Corden’s comic gift is that he combines innocence so naturally with mischief. Although he’s 33, his face is that of an adolescent boy who has just discovered beer, Internet porn and some new flavor of potato chip.”
Melbourne’s Top Art Museum Still Won’t Let People Sketch There – And Said People Are Angry
“A groundswell of anger about [the National Gallery of Victoria’s] restrictions on visitors sketching, painting or even taking notes has the gallery scrambling to amend and defend its guidelines. And a group of eminent local artists has joined a campaign to persuade those in charge to throw open its doors freely to those who want to paint before its great works.”
Major Change In Australian Arts Funding Proposal: Make Big Companies Compete For Grants
“Opening the major performing arts companies – including the state theatre companies, Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet – to competition for funding and peer review will no doubt prove most contentious since it raises the possibility of a company losing ongoing funding.”
R. Crumb On The Art World’s Embrace Of His Comics
“People tell me this Museum of Modern Art in Paris is a really big deal, and that it’s very prestigious to have a show there. I guess I should be impressed. I don’t know.”