He first got himself noticed with a provocative staging of Handel’s Clori, Tirsi e Fileno in London’s leading gay nightclub. He worked extensively at Covent Garden, San Francisco and Los Angeles Operas, Opera Theater of St. Louis, and especially Santa Fe Opera; his highest-profile project in Europe was directing a series of American musicals (in English) at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Israel Arrests Palestinian Antiquities Dealers In Hobby Lobby Smuggling Case
“Authorities arrested five Palestinian antiquities dealers in Jerusalem and confiscated items dating back thousands of years from their homes and shops: papyrus fragments from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the bust of an Etruscan woman, a fresco from Pompeii depicting swimming fish. They also seized more modern objects – two black luxury Audi vehicles – and more than $200,000 in cash.”
These Folks Won’t Let Tourism And Pricey Real Estate Chase Them Out Of Venice – They’re Squatting
With houses in the city selling for a million euros or so as vacation homes, working- and middle-class Venetians have been getting priced out of their hometown. “Now an organized movement of illegal squatters is laying claim to abandoned, dilapidated housing.”
Netflix Buys Itself A Comic-Book Company
“Netflix has made its first acquisition, buying the Glasgow-based comic book company behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman, as it looks to imitate Marvel-owner Disney’s superhero strategy.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Gets $5 Million To Spotlight Its Concert Hall’s Organ
The program, “which is to begin this coming season, will make the orchestra and the Kimmel [Center] even more organcentric: commissioning new works; programming additional organ concertos and orchestral works that weave organ in and out of the overall texture; holding community concerts, recitals, and postlude concerts; and providing real-time program notes that explain the way the organ works.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.07.17
Sunrise, Sunset and Subjective Connections
Can we name a universal aesthetic experience, one that all peoples around the globe have encountered from the beginning of humanity to the present? Probably not. But if we wanted to come close, we could … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-08-07
The Artist in His Studio – Matisse: and These are a Few of His Favourite Things
The artist’s studio is different things to different people. I’ve been in quite a few of these (often magical) spaces. The first I can remember is Barbara Hepworth’s in Cornwall, and most of what … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-08-07
Backenroth And Fischer, Stenmark & Piatruba
Swedish bassist Hans Backenroth and Danish guitarist Jacob Fischer played in the 11th century Klosterkyrkan, not far from Ystad’s center. Among the most experienced European jazz … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-08-07
Milstein vs. Szigeti
My frustrations with a recent performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto sent me to youtube in search of something different: an act of therapy. … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-08-06
How Hunter S. Thompson Would Cover Donald Trump
Terry McDonell looks at what Thompson did to with Richard Nixon – and figures that HST would have completely understood Trump (not that he’d have liked him) and would have had a total blast writing about the Mooch.
At What Point Does Sacred Music Become Too Sensuous? Christianity Is Not The Only Religion To Struggle With The Question
Arguments about whether and when music in church was uplifting or distracting go back to at least St. Augustine and St. Jerome – but, as Alexander Lee finds out, various Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist sages and authorities have hashed out similar disputes and come up with widely varying answers. (Do we take it Hindus and Confucians saw no such dilemmas?)
Fears That ’13 Reasons Why’ Could Lead To Spike In Teen Suicide May Have Been Well-Founded: Study
“Google queries about suicide rose by almost 20 percent in 19 days after the show came out, representing between 900,000 and 1.5 million more searches than usual regarding the subject.’ And yes, there is typically a correlation between searches and attempts; also, “searches for precise suicide methods increased after the series’ release.”
Artificial Intelligence Program Made Paintings People Liked Better Than The Ones At Art Basel
Researchers at Rutgers University’s Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory not only created the software, “[they] showed the generated artworks to a pool of 18 people to judge, mixed with 50 images of real paintings – half by famous Abstract Expressionists and half shown at Art Basel 2016.” Not only did the panel prefer the AI paintings, they thought that many of the Art Basel works had been created by the computer. (As Claire Voon puts it, “zombie formalism is real.”)