Author: Laura Collins Hughes

Superstitious? Avoid Verdi’s “La Forza Del Destino.”

Theatre people, with their trembling at the title of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, aren’t the only superstitious ones in the bunch. “There’s even a bad-luck equivalent to Macbeth – Verdi’s La forza del destino, a great, eventful, melody-rich work…. It’s hard to pinpoint where the reputation for trouble started, but a lot of opera types refer to Forza and bad luck in the same breath as if it were a firmly established fact.”

Free Admission Pays Off Nicely For Baltimore Museums

“The gamble of free admissions at Baltimore’s two largest art museums seems to be paying off. Admissions are soaring, and both the Baltimore Museum of Art and The Walters Art Museum report that they are attracting a more diverse crowd than ever before. Museum memberships have decreased, as was expected, but total donations are up,” and “administrators are triumphantly declaring their bold free-for-all experiment a success.”

League, B’way Stagehands Agree To More Talks

“The League of American Theaters and Producers, the organization representing most of Broadway’s theater owners and producers, has scheduled two more meetings this week with Local One, the stagehands’ union, a union spokesman said.” After setting a Sept. 30 deadline for negotiations and then moving it to Oct. 1, “in talks on Friday the league sought more negotiating dates. The union agreed to sessions Tuesday and Thursday.”

In Tania Head’s Story, Echoes Of Lillian Hellman

Tania Head’s dramatic and unsubstantiated tale of surviving the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center brings to mind Lillian Hellman’s self-proclaimed heroism against the Nazis. “Whether from Lillian Hellman’s pen or Tania Head’s mouth, in Europe during World War II or Lower Manhattan in 2001, the mythic power of the stories was the same. Love had given Hellman and Ms. Head the strength to transcend terrors. The similarities do not end there. Neither story has any verifiable link to reality.”

Portrait Gallery’s Tax-Generated Funds Buy A Hockney

“A self-portrait of David Hockney standing before a work-in-progress while his friend and former assistant, Charlie Scheips, scrutinises the canvas has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. The £148,000 purchase is the gallery’s first painted self-portrait of Hockney. Completed two years ago, it was bought from funds raised by ‘gift aid’ in which the public donates money on buying an admission ticket….”

Farewell Tour? Ha! Dame Kiri Begs To Differ.

“Over the next several months, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, among operadom’s most beloved voices, will be singing on what is being billed as her farewell tour. … But Dame Kiri, as she prefers to be called, is having none of it. Reached by phone recently, the exquisitely preserved 63-year-old soprano immediately sets to correcting any impressions that a reporter may have had that this is her goodbye.”

Being On Broadway, It Turns Out, Doesn’t Suck

Off-Broadway regular Theresa Rebeck weighs in on making her Broadway debut as a playwright. “I am here to report that having a play on Broadway does not suck. The sets are bigger, the lights are prettier, the seats are more comfortable, and if you play your cards right, the actors are so blindingly brilliant that you burst into tears in the rehearsal room, overwhelmed by the privilege of listening to artists of this calibre say your words.”

Goldin Photo Rekindles Art-Vs.-Porn Debate

The controversy over Elton John’s seized Nan Goldin photograph “resurrects a familiar debate about censorship: does the context of an image determine whether or not it breaks the law? In other words, does it matter that a photograph of a naked child is in a respectable art gallery – rather than in a seedy magazine or on an illegal website? Or is explicit child nudity – which is how many would categorise Goldin’s picture – unacceptable and illegal, per se?”