“The Radio 2 Kiri Prize will be announced this week as part of the BBC’s attempt to open opera up to a wider audience. The winner will perform with Dame Kiri at the BBC’s Proms in the Park in September, launching their opera career in front of an audience of thousands.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Toibin’s Brooklyn Is Bookies’ Favorite For Costa Award
“‘Since winning the novel award, [Colm] TóibÃn has been backed almost to the exclusion of the field,’ said Ladbrokes spokesman Nick Weinberg. William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe agreed, saying that Brooklyn was the only title which punters ‘are backing in numbers’.” The Costa Book of the Year is to be announced this evening.
Naples Opera House Reopening After €67M Revamp
“Built by Naples’s Bourbon rulers in 1737 and described in 1817 by the French writer Stendhal as ‘dazzling the eyes and enrapturing the soul’, the San Carlo has staged premiers by Rossini and Verdi. But in 2007 government administrators had to be called in as debts of €20m threatened its survival.”
The Reason For Our Weak Willpower? Our Weak Brains
“Knowing something is the right thing to do takes work — brain work — and our brains aren’t always up to that.”
Michelangelo, In Verse, On His Sistine Chapel Suffering
“A gifted poet as well as a sculptor and painter, he wrote energetically about despair, detailing with relish the unpleasant side of his work on the famous ceiling. … ‘My haunches are grinding into my guts, / my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight, / every gesture I make is blind and aimless.'”
Ticketmaster-Live Nation Merger Will Transform Music Biz
“The merger,” approved by the Justice Department, “will create a goliath with hands in every pocket of the music business. … But for the $889-million deal to proceed, the two companies agreed to the unusual step of creating a pair of rivals to ensure a competitive market for ticket sales, which has been one of the few bright spots for the ailing music industry.”
Why Conservatives Should Love Avatar
“The film is a perfect souffle of left-wing attitudes. But conservative critics are missing the conflict at the heart of the movie,” which champions a cause dear to them. Central to the plot is “a stark violation of property rights, the foundation of the free market and indeed of civilization.”
Banksy Film Is A Hot Ticket At Sundance
“‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ is a work that’s nearly impossible to categorize. The movie that’s both about — and made by — the controversial and hugely popular artist grapples with a separate series of contradictions about the competing themes of fame and privacy.”
To Solve Leonardo Mystery, Scientists Want To Dig Him Up
“A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie” in order to “rebuild Leonardo’s face and compare it with the Mona Lisa.”
A Decade’s Worth Of Déjà Vu: 1980s Return At The Movies
“The children who grew up watching the big, pre-irony 1980s movies — where all was black and white, good was good and evil was evil, before Tarantino and Soderbergh came and blurred all the lines — are now the directors and studio bosses, and they’re making the movies they used to watch.”