Author: Douglas McLennan

School As We Knew It Is Over. Long Live School!

“School” as we knew it is over — but that doesn’t mean learning has to be. Learning is a universal activity across human societies; school as we knew it is a recent, unusual, self-contradictory institution. As educators and as citizens, we need to understand the various purposes school was supposed to serve, and the limitations to its success. Only then can we re-imagine education for, and beyond, this public health emergency. – Medium

Will “Hamilton” On Disney Bring A New Audience To The Theatre?

“Hamilton’s premiere on such an accessible platform marks a potential for genuine change and improvement in the future. I know that nothing will ever replace the feeling of being in a real-life theater, sharing a room with strangers experiencing the same extraordinary thrills. But if this is the best, most inclusive way to introduce more people to theater, then I am all for it.” – CNET

The Metropolitan Opera’s Uncertain Future

“We have raised $60m in funding over the past few months,” says Peter Gelb. “This has solved the immediate problem of the cancellation of the last weeks of the 2019-20 season and the loss of ticket revenue for this fall season, but it does not address the long-term economic challenge. We do not expect full audiences for some time and that is very significant.” – Financial Times

Film Composer Ennio Morricone, 91

Mr. Morricone scored many popular films of the past 40 years: Édouard Molinaro’s “La Cage aux Folles” (1978), Mr. Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), Mr. De Palma’s “The Untouchables” (1987), Roman Polanski’s “Frantic” (1988), Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso” (1988), Wolfgang Petersen’s “In the Line of Fire” (1993), and Mr. Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” (2015). – The New York Times

How Elegant Vienna Became An Explosion Of Modernism

A much-romanticised era for the city, these years are commonly celebrated as a period of explosive artistic, literary, intellectual and especially musical modernisation in which resolutely iconoclastic geniuses such as Schoenberg, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt and Alfred Schnitzler broke with the past in order to lay the groundwork for the future. In this narrative, Vienna’s musical revolution was especially radical: Schoenberg’s Pierrot was later characterised by Igor Stravinsky as ‘the solar-plexus of modern music’ – the culmination of a shift away from tonality and hundreds of years of classical music, in favour of a new music for a new century. But how did this happen? – Aeon