Having just come through a tumultuous period – a near-collapse, a rescue plan, foreclosure on its home stage (and another rescue), the resignation of the old boss after 35 years, and the arrival of a promising new boss – the flagship of Philadelphia’s nonprofit theaters is taking what its board chair calls “a year off from producing to get our house in order.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Staging ‘The Great Canadian Opera’ To Focus On The Issue Canadian History Has Always Tried Not To Face
“The opera, Harry Somers’s Louis Riel, tells the story of Riel, who led two 19th-century uprisings against the young nation of Canada, helped found Manitoba and was hanged for treason.” Missing from the score, and from its early stagings around Canada’s centennial, were the voices of the country’s First Nations. The Canadian Opera Company’s new production (for Canada’s 150th anniversary) has found a poetic way to address that absence.
Philadelphia Orchestra Goes To Prison, Led By Its Composer-In-Residence
Reporter Peter Dobrin follows Hannibal Lokumbe as he takes four of the orchestra’s musicians to the Philadelphia Detention Center to perform a new piece about Anne Frank.
Russian Authorities Raid Hermitage, Seize Documents On Soviets’ Sale Of Confiscated Art
“A curator at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has claimed that government authorities have seized archives and books at the institution’s shops related to the Soviets’ sale of art nationalised after the Bolshevik Revolution to Western collectors, sparking fears of an attempt to rewrite the country’s history.”
Two Iranian-American Gallerists Charged With Trying To Overthrow Iranian Government
Karan Vafadari and Afarin Nayssari, founders of the Aun Gallery in Tehran, were arrested last summer after Revolutionary Guards stormed the exhibition space, destroyed some art and carried away other pieces. “The couple has been incarcerated at [the] notorious Evin Prison … and has been denied access to legal counsel, interrogated extensively, and frequently placed in solitary confinement over a series of charges that human rights organizations have denounced as baseless.”
Virginia’s Richmond Ballet Announces $10 Million Funding Campaign
“The organization, which is the State Ballet of Virginia, is entering the public phase of its ‘Road to the Future’ campaign after reaching more than half of its fundraising goal.”
Ballet San Antonio May Give Up Live Musicians For Its ‘Nutcracker’
“[San Antonio] Symphony CEO David Gross says they offered Ballet San Antonio a reduced rate of $150,000 for a 2-week multi-show run, but the ballet company couldn’t commit.”
The Euphemism Treadmill
In this Lexicon Valley podcast, “John McWhorter [talks about] the evolution from ‘crippled’ to ‘handicapped’ to ‘differently abled’ – and why no such term is likely to stick around long.” (audio)
Conductor Louis Frémaux, 95
Known for an extensive discography on the Erato and EMI labels and for his posts with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Sydney Symphony, Frémaux “was the only major orchestral conductor to serve two spells as an officer in the Foreign Legion.”
‘Most Writers Do Not Love Being On The Side Of Power’ – Elif Batuman On The Trouble With Travel Writing In English
“The writer in the Western literary imagination is an individual observer, an individualist, experiencing and observing the world and its structures from the outside, with some amount of skepticism and humor and empathy. If that’s what you’re trying to do, or to be, it can feel really uncomfortable to realize that, within the story you’re trying to write about, there is an equally real sense in which you are actually also the beneficiary and representative of, an insider of, a world-dominating superpower.”