At a time when classical music recording labels are floundering, the London Symphony Orchestra, which started its own recording label last year, is actually turning a profit.”This may not be the answer to all the industry’s ills, but it certainly promises a wider variety of new recordings than might otherwise be on offer, whatever happens to all those labels that have dominated the field for so long.” – The Guardian
Author: Douglas McLennan
WIDOWS FOREVER
In 1905 Franz Lehar modernized opera, and made himself a fortune. His “The Merry Widow was the “Cats” of its day. “Within three and a half years of its premiere Merry Widow’ racked up more than 18,000 performances in German, English and American theaters. Twenty years on, its audience was counted in the millions.” – Opera News
PEOPLE GO DOWN
Up With People, the ever-bright enthusiastic singing organization founded in 1965 is shutting down. Members paid $14,000 a year each to belong, and the group has five touring troupes. “The group’s 262 employees worldwide will lose their jobs, including 66 at the headquarters north of Denver. The headquarters land and building will be sold to help pay off the group’s $7.3 million in debts and leasing commitments and provide operating cash.” – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) (AP)
PHILOSOPHY OF SELF-PUBLISHING
Self-publishing in the field of philosophy is tempting. “One problem is perceived to be that the system makes it virtually impossible for non-academics to get published, no matter what the quality of their work is.” But to the establishment, self-publishing is the kiss of death – no one of standing will take a self-published work seriously. – The Philosopher’s Magazine
OUR BODIES AT EIGHT
A parent has filed a complaint against the San Francisco Ballet School for discrimination because the school rejected her daughter on the basis of her looks. The eight-year-old girl was told not to try out because of her figure. The fourth-grader is 3-foot-9 and weighs 64 pounds. The mother claims the school’s criteria used to weed budding ballerinas from also-rans violates San Francisco’s nondiscrimination provisions. – New Jersey Online (AP)
TOO OLD TO COMPETE?
Oxford University is one of the world’s great universities. “Yet today there is also a sense of malaise, both inside and outside the university: a belief that Oxford finds it difficult to adapt to changing educational and social needs, a fear that it can no longer maintain its pre-eminence.” – Prospect 12/00
OOPS
- “For decades, guides have directed countless tourists to a red-roofed, beamed cottage near Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon to pay homage at the place where his mother, Mary Arden, was thought to have been born in the early 16th century. Now it has emerged from new research that she was not born there at all, but in a house some 30 yards down the road in the same village.” – New York Times
DISTRESS SALE
Margot Fonteyn’s personal effects, costumes and clothes are to be auctioned off next week, but her friends and the dance community are protesting. – Sydney Morning Herald
OF IMAGES MOVING AND STILL
Painting and cinema are still handcuffed together on a one-way ticket to the morgue. When artists appropriate images from film they always seem to be drawn to the melancholy underside of the tinsel factory. Painting and cinema both create fictional spaces, but the space of painting is static. So when a moment in a film is snatched and turned into a painting, it becomes deathly: you might call it painting noir.” – The Guardian
ROLLING AGAIN
Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” opened on Broadway in 1981 and lasted only 16 performances before the hostile reviews won out. So why is it being revived in London, when even the show’s creators acknowledged it wasn’t one of their best efforts? – The Telegraph (UK)