“A British opera director has been lambasted by [right-wing] Italian MPs after staging an ‘anti-racist’ performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute featuring a bulldozer poised to raze a migrant tent camp. Graham Vick, of Birmingham Opera Company and a former director of Glyndebourne, revised the original plot in an experimental production at the Macerata opera festival.”
Month: July 2018
Rome’s Subway Expansion Keeps Digging Up Ancient Treasures
“The presence of ancient artifacts underground is a daunting challenge for urban developers. For archaeologists, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. ‘I think it’s the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to me, professionally speaking,’ says Simona Morretta, the state archaeologist in charge of the Amba Aradam site. ‘Because you never get the chance in a regular excavation to dig so deep. That’s how we’ve found architectural complexes as important as this.'”
1,000-Year-Old City Walls Of Kano, Nigeria ‘May Not Survive The Rainy Season’
“The historic walls are under threat as never before from a combination of an exploding population that has put pressure on land and housing, as well as local politics. … Houses and commercial buildings have sprung up on [some] demolished sections or been turned into dumping grounds for rubbish, litter and sewage from the ever more crowded city. Elsewhere, excavators dig into the fortifications for the red iron- and aluminium-rich rock laterite, which is loaded onto donkeys and taken away for use in construction and renovation.”
Writers’ Festival In Australia Under Fire For Disinviting Politician And Germaine Greer
“[Their publisher] said dropping the controversial feminist and the outspoken former New South Wales premier from the September program [of the Brisbane Writers’ Festival] ‘seems counter to the ethos of freedom of speech’. The festival claimed it was merely trying to ensure a balance within the program in one case, and responding to the decisions of a partner organisation in another.” (Greer, of course, had some choice words on the matter.)
Leonard Bernstein: Free from gender with nothing to prove or lose
The pre-performance corridors of the Fisher Center at Bard College appeared to have been invaded by The Radical Faeries …
A report on Bard Summerscape’s revival of Lenny’s long-forgotten version of Peter Pan.
A Surge Of Interest In Jazz Among Younger Listeners?
Spotify told the BBC that in the past six months, the number of UK users aged 30 and under listening to their flagship Jazz UK playlist had increased by 108%. Smaller streaming platforms such as Deezer and Amazon Music reported similar increases. The growth has been attributed to a flourishing UK scene which fuses jazz with a variety of genres.
National Record Album Day? Really?
You would never guess, from the way the album remains the centre of the musical conversation, that it is dying. Though MSM revenues are rising, album sales have halved since 2010, down last year to 45.8m physical sales and 13.8m digital sales.
Record Number Of Cable Cord Cutters
This year, the number of cord-cutters in the U.S. — consumers who have ever cancelled traditional pay-TV service and do not resubscribe — will climb 32.8%, to 33.0 million adults, according to new estimates from research firm eMarketer. That’s compared with a total of 24.9 million cord-cutters as of the end of 2017, which was up 43.6% year over year (and an upward revision from eMarketer’s previous 22 million estimate).
Alonzo King Talks About Dance And Dancers
I can use dancers like Legos, but I believe that human beings are brilliant. Science tells us now that the human body is electromagnetic energy — it is swirling in nonstop energy with billions of cells that are dying and being born in a second. That is mind-boggling. That is just the body. The other thing is uniqueness and brilliance. I’ve never met a stupid person, but I’ve met people who were blocked.
This Year’s Man Booker Prize Longlist Includes A Graphic Novel
Organizers on Tuesday announced the 13 books in the long list for the prestigious award, chosen from 171 submissions this year — the highest number of titles that has been put forward in the prize’s 50-year history.