“This may be the artistic organization that finally mobilizes the elusive community spirit in dot-com land, the one that channels all that newly acquired wealth into a legacy for the future. The South Bay will have a fully professional company to call its own. And, in an era when anybody with big bucks, a ballerina chum and a serious case of artistic amnesia can found a suburban vanity troupe, the work of Ballet San Jose’s executive director Andrew Bales and his staff deserves a fanfare or two.” – San Francisco Examiner
Author: Douglas McLennan
REAL NARRATIVES
Forty German writers gather to talk about a “renaissance of narration” and discover they have a hard time pinning down what “reality” is. – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
BEETHOVEN’S DEATH
How did Beethoven die so young (he was 56)? Why did he go deaf? New analysis of hair trimmed from his head moments after his death may reveal the reasons…or so claims a newly published book released this week. – Discovery
PATERNITY LEAVE
Bass-baritone Bryn Terfel has upset opera fans at Covent Garden, Salzburg and Munich opera houses by canceling his next four months of performances to be with his wife for the birth of their third child, due in January. – BBC Music Magazine
THE OPERA CALENDAR
With opera attendance across America up more than 42 percent since 1982, the opera world is in pretty good shape. Here’s a roundup of opera highlights for this season from around the country. – Sonicnet
OPERATIC DILEMMA
“If other artforms are in a constant scramble to reinvent themselves, opera gives the singular impression of a maiden aunt cast upon a desert island, clutching her trousseau of frocks circa 1910 and a pile of 78s of ‘Great Voices of the Century’ ready to play ‘Desert Island Discs’. It is a source of some anxiety to opera companies, not just locally, but around the world, that their audiences are getting older.” – The Age (Melbourne)
FIGHTING BACK
The all-female string quartet Bond has been banned from the classical music record charts in Britain for sounding too much like pop music. “There’s a classical supervisory committee and they felt it more of a pop record than a classical record.” – BBC
LIFE WITHOUT BOULEZ?
Where would our musical cultural have been without Pierre Boulez? “Important works by a vast number of other composers — Elliott Carter, Gyorgy Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle — would never have been commissioned or recorded. And there would have been no one to keep contemporary music in the public eye, especially in the public eye represented by the television camera.” – New York Times
NUNN-SENSE
- Critics are lining up against London’s National Theatre director Trevor Nunn. But “Nunn’s fiercest critics might want to think twice before hysterically demanding that he be ousted.” After all, who would replace him? It’s not an idle question. – The Observer (UK)
ARTS SECRETARY UNDER ATTACK
“After nearly three-and-a-half relatively smooth years as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, everything seems to be going wrong for Chris Smith at the same time. The future of the National Lottery is in doubt. Tomorrow the BBC is launching its new 10pm BBC News, against his wishes. The Millennium Dome is an ongoing disaster. There has been widespread criticism of the performances of subsidised institutions such as the National Theatre and the Royal Opera House.” – The Independent (UK) 10/15/00