“This is the second time in recent years that the Overture [Center] resident company has announced shows only to cancel them. Despite a solid showing for Nutcracker in December, the organization has struggled with cash flow, lower than expected ticket sales for Dracula and flagging fundraising.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Last-Minute Ticket App Is Moving On Broadway – And Theater Owners Aren’t Happy
“TodayTix, which 26 months ago introduced a mobile app for selling discounted and full-price last-minute tickets, has already become a visible presence on Broadway … [But] the tight-knit world of Broadway theater owners has not welcomed TodayTix.”
We Are Hopelessly Hooked On Our Smartphones
Jacob Weisberg: “Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history.”
Why Should ‘American Psycho’ Be A Musical? Let The Composer And Director Tell You
Rupert Goold: “You’re in a public environment with [Patrick Bateman] when youire in a theater, you’re all in one room with his very sexually present energy. It’s like Phillip Glass or Depeche Mode in that it moves heavily and intensely, with a chill, but the emotional payload at the end is incredibly powerful, because we haven’t been belting our hearts out at each other throughout the whole thing.”
Leading Composer (Joined By His Wife) Actually Tells New York Times About His Kinky Sex Life
“[He] said that he felt liberated after what he described as a lifetime’s and three divorces’ worth of suppressing what he once considered ‘devilish’ desires. The change has altered his music in ways both quantifiable and more ineffable.”
Newly Discovered Handel Cantata Turns Up In Conductor’s Own Library
The piece, just authenticated by a musicologist from Berkeley, shares a title and one aria with one of the composer’s better-known Italian works for solo soprano. The work’s other three arias are entirely different.
Iranian Media Have Pooled Funds To Increase The Bounty On Salman Rushdie’s Head
“Forty state-run media outlets in Iran have pooled together to raise $600,000 to add to the fatwa on writer Salman Rushdie, 27 years after Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called for Rushdie’s assassination following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses.”
Literary Festivals Are Booming In India
“Close to 100 populate the land; not long ago, the concept was virtually unknown here. … As the festivals have blossomed, they have also turned into something more than strictly literary: a mixture of the public square and the television studio, or forums where India talks to itself. … [And] increasingly, [these events] are being thrust into wider culture wars.”
Robert Baustian, Longtime Conductor At Santa Fe Opera, Dead At 94
He worked at the company for 23 years, from its first season, 1957, until 1980, conducting music from Mozart to Rossini to Stravinsky to Douglas Moore.
National Symphony’s Incoming Music Director Gets Another Plum Position
“The London Symphony Orchestra announced today that as of the 2016-17 season, [Gianandrea] Noseda will become one of its two principal guest conductors – a full year before he officially takes over as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra.”