Conductor Daniel Barenboim has given the Berlin Senate an ultimatum: provide $5 million more for the budget of the Deutsche Staatsoper or he will leave at the end of his current contract. “I have said what the Staatsoper needs,” he is quoted as saying. “Either it receives that. Then I will stay. Or it does not receive that. Then I will go.” – Chicago Tribune
Author: Douglas McLennan
SANTA FE TRAIL
After 43 years, John Crosby steps down as head of the Santa Fe Opera. “Santa Fe has been a huge influence on the American opera scene, the way Glyndebourne influences opera in England, and Aix-en-Provence influences opera in France. You walk across the deck here on a summer evening, and you see the movers and shakers of the opera world. And when an opera has been a success here, it is suddenly looked at by other companies.” – New York Times
FIGHTING FOR CULTURE
In the so-you-can-rest-easier department, isn’t it nice to know that NATO is protecting our interests in culture as well as in the skies? “The aim of NATOarts is to advance the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s goals in the cultural realm. There was also a feeling that an organization such as NATO should take a more proactive role in the formation of international culture.” – New York Press 09/06/00
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The entertainment industry is pumping big money into politics. “The Democrats have collected $5.8 million from the television, movie, and music industries, ranking it fourth on the campaign donation list. That figure outpaces the Republicans by $2.1 million, which ranks the entertainment industry eleventh.” The money figures to influence policies on recording, intellectual property and content regulation. – Wired 09/06/00
LOOKING FOR LOOPHOLES
Australia’s major performing arts companies are lobbying the government to refund the GST paid on all their tickets since the new tax went into effect earlier this year, on the grounds that they should all be granted exempt status as “charitable institutions.” – The Age (Melbourne) 09/06/00
MARKET TIMING
Summer vacation is over and in France publishers are ready. In this 2-3-week period at the beginning of September 557 new books are due to be published to coincide with the annual back-to-work. “Editors, booksellers and critics agree that the market cannot absorb the flood of new books, that many are doomed to sink even before they appear. But the tradition goes on: since 1991, the wave of fiction has grown by 50 percent, with a new record being set this year.” – New York Times
THE “CHORUS EFFECT” —
— in publishing is a well-known phenomenon, when a rash of books on the same theme are released at the same time. This month’s coincidence? “Veteran writers who are bombarding the bookshops with tomes on how British culture is going down the tubes.” – The Guardian
PRIZED POETRY
A new prize for poetry, worth $80,000 (CDN) annually is created in Canada. “The Griffin Poetry Prize will rank as one of the most valuable literary awards to originate in Canada and certainly the Canadian English-Canadian prize with the most international scope.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
OLD SCORES
Jane Campion won an Oscar in 1993 for her original screenplay “The Piano.” But should she have? “The fine print in the recently published Oxford Companion to Australian Film suggests otherwise. In its entry for The Piano, the volume notes that the film was in fact ‘based on the novel, The Story of a New Zealand River, by Jane Mander,’ though the book was ‘uncredited.’ It’s a bold and controversial charge, and one that has stirred up a considerable storm Down Under.” – Lingua Franca
THE BOLSHOI THEATRE’S DECLINE –
– culminating in the Russian president’s recent sacking of its artistic director, mirrors Russia’s countrywide troubles. “The famed opera and ballet company increasingly has become another monument to a bygone era, when the resources of an all-powerful state were poured into the arts.” – CNN