Aureliano in Palmira, which gets its U.S. premiere next week, “tells the story of Roman emperor Aurelian’s 272 A.D. campaign against Queen Zenobia of Palmyra … [It] has had a fascinating journey – from highly anticipated star vehicle to underwhelming opening night to obscurity to recent rediscovery as one of Rossini’s most beautiful works.” And you’ll probably recognize the opening notes immediately.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Nice Jazz Festival Cancelled Following Bastille Day Attack
The event, which had been scheduled to run from Saturday through next Wednesday, was to have featured George Clinton, Laura Mvula, Avishai Cohen, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Youssou N’Dour, among others.
Michael Flatley To Open His Own Chain Of Irish Dancing Schools
“Flatley’s new venture will begin teaching classes in and around London from September, with plans to expand internationally in the next five years.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.14.16
More Major Met Museum Departures – And More Woes
The exodus, and the troubles, continue at 1000 Fifth Avenue: announcement of the departure of Carrie Rebora Barratt, a deputy director of the Metropolitan Museum and longtime close associate of director Tom Campbell, is imminent. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-07-14
They can do better
I got a press release from the Boston Symphony, advertising live streams from Tanglewood. On July 15 (tomorrow, as I write this), Pinchas Zukerman will conduct the Mozart E flat symphony, and the BSO will stream the second and thirs movements. Which seems lame. Why not the whole piece?… read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-07-14
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Ragers And Tantrum-Throwers Now Have A Diagnosis In The DSM Because Their Brains Are Wired That Way
“Given enough frustration, it’s normal and healthy to get angry. But for a subset of the U.S. population – some 7 percent of adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health – the propensity to fly off the handle is so great that they can be professionally diagnosed with ‘Intermittent Explosive Disorder,’ or IED.” (Yes, IED as in improvised explosive device.)
Vatican Digitizes a 1,600-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript of the ‘Aeneid’
“In Rome, around the year 400, a scribe and three painters created an illuminated manuscript of Virgil’s Aeneid, illustrating the the ancient hero Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy. 1,600 years later, the Vatican has digitized the surviving fragments of this manuscript. Known as the Vergilius Vaticanus, it’s one of the world’s oldest versions of the Latin epic poem, and you can browse it for free online.”
Pokémon Go Started As An April Fools’ Joke
“For April Fools’ Day in 2014, Google created a ‘game’ in which users looked on Google Maps for Pokémon à la I Spy or Where’s Waldo. … Accompanying the game was a heart-pounding, highly produced video showing people out in the actual world climbing mountains, riding camels across the desert and taking to the sea in order to find Pokémon. The goal? To win a job as ‘Pokémon Master’ at Google.”
Oh, Great, The Dumb-Tenor Stereotype Is Back In The Spotlight – And Tied Up With #BlackLivesMatter, No Less
At a Major League Baseball game on Tuesday night, a member of the pop-opera group The Tenors, without warning his colleagues, changed the words of Canada’s national anthem to add the words “all lives matter” – and, of course, all hell broke loose. Said tenor evidently had no idea that “all lives matter” is an anti-#BlackLivesMatter backlash slogan and thought he was being inclusive. And so the jokes begin …
Controversial Russian Artist Stripped Of Human Rights Award After They Found Out What He Wanted To Do With The Money
The Human Rights Foundation withdrew the Vaclav Havel Prize from Pyotr Pavlensky – the man who nailed his scrotum to Red Square, tried to burn down the headquarters of the successor agency to the KGB and call it “art,” and saw Russia’s top art prize cancelled after he was nominated for it – because he planned to pay the legal bills of a violent group in the country’s Far East.
Star Of Play With ‘Worst Audience Behavior Ever’ Defends Audience, Says We Should Stop Being Prigs
“[Game of Thrones star Kit] Harington rejected claims made by the award-winning theatre producer Richard Jordan in The Stage newspaper that audiences had behaved inappropriately at the final night of Harington’s Doctor Faustus … ‘I have been a theatregoer since childhood and I didn’t feel that our audiences were disrespectful in the slightest.'”