“Alberta Ballet will be asking supporters across the province to each donate $50 to the organization over the next seven months to help weather financial hardships the company has suffered over the last few years. It’s part of a $1-million fundraising campaign launched on its 50th anniversary to help put the organization, the second-largest ballet company in Canada, on steadier ground financially after revenue fell drastically in its 2013-2014 season.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Makes All Regular Concerts Free For Students
“The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, already a national leader in offering affordable concerts, said Tuesday it is offering free tickets to school and college students to unlimited concerts during the 2016-17 season. Students can go online now and order tickets a week before single tickets go on sale to the general public.”
Soprano Patrice Munsel, 91, Star Of Opera And Television
At age 17, she became the youngest singer ever to debut at the Met, where she was known for soubrette and coloratura roles and sang 225 performances over 15 years. She sang popular standards on her own radio show in the 1940s, became a beloved leading lady on Broadway, and even had her own variety series, The Patrice Munsel Show, on ABC in 1957 and ’58.
The Courtroom Battle Over Kafka’s Archive Has Been Decided Once And For All
An eight-year legal struggle between the National Library of Israel, which claims the papers based on instructions in the will of Kafka’s friend Max Brod, and the daughters of Brod’s secretary Esther Hoffe, who insist that Brod gave their mother the papers to do with as she liked, has been ended with a decision by Israel’s Supreme Court.
Battle Cry In Birmingham: ‘Save Our Brutalism!’
“The Brutiful Birmingham Action Group (see what they did there?) is fighting an uphill struggle to preserve the city’s best examples of 1950s and ’60s concrete and glass minimalism.”
Opera Director Kay Walker Castaldo Dead At 67
“[She] directed productions for Opera Company of Philadelphia, Cincinnati Opera, Teatro Colón, and New York City Opera. Since 2012, she had been associate professor at the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan.” Says former Opera Company of Philadelphia chief Robert Driver, “She is probably the only director who never raised her voice.”
Arts And Culture’s Contribution To UK Economy Is Up By 15 Percent In One Year, One-Third In Five Years
“Since 2010, the culture sector’s economic contribution has grown by 33%, from £20.3 billion to £27 billion in 2015. The sector is now worth 1.6% of the UK’s entire economy … The government estimates the cultural sector’s worth to the UK economy has grown by 15% alone between 2014 and 2015.”
West End Staffers Sue Britain’s Largest Theatre Owner, Alleging They’ve Been Shortchanged On Pay
“Entertainment union BECTU is representing 38 front-of-house workers across all of [Ambassador Theatre Group’s] West End venues, claiming they have been paid less than the agreed Society of London Theatre rate.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.09.16
Fifth Anniversary Highlights: Art for Art’s Sake?
During the month of August, Engaging Matters is republishing some of the most widely read articles from the five years this blog has been in existence. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-08-09
Lookback: Our Girl in Chicago on preparing to see a movie
From 2006: I sometimes do too much fieldwork before seeing a movie, building up a whole structure of preconceptions that I then have to trundle into the theater with me and crane my neck to peer around at the thing itself. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-08-09
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Nabokov’s ‘Pale Fire’ Is ‘The Great Gay Comic Novel’, Argues Edmund White
“[The character] Kinbote’s mad ‘notes’, far from commenting on Shade’’ poem, trace out a mini-biog¬raphy of Kinbote. And that biography, real or delusional, is the picture of an unrepentant homosexual, sensual, guilt-free, tirelessly on the make. In the 1950s, gay men were portrayed in fiction and films as lonely phantoms – sad and colourless – or sometimes as instant villains (see Norman Mailer’s essay, ‘The Gay Villain’, 1954). Nabokov, by contrast, depicts Kinbote as lustful, entitled, screamingly absurd.”