“The most hotly awaited event of the opera season just got a new leading man. Cold Mountain, the years-in-the-works Jennifer Higdon opera based on Charles Frazier’s 1997 Civil War-era novel, was written with star baritone Nathan Gunn in mind – but he has been replaced by up-and-coming Jarrett Ott. Gunn withdrew from the Feb. 5-14 run at the Academy of Music. His stated reason was family illness.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Costa Award For Book Of The Year Goes To Frances Hardinge’s ‘The Lie Tree”
“The prize has been selecting a book of the year since 1985, choosing from the categories of novel, first novel, biography, children’s book and poetry. It has been compared to choosing between ‘bananas and chicken curry’ by one former judge. The only other children’s book to win was The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman, in 2001.”
MoMA Backtracks On The Most Ambitious Parts Of Its Expansion Plan
“The Museum of Modern Art has decided to forgo the retractable glass wall. And it no longer plans to install a floor that moves up and down nor a new entrance to its sculpture garden. Responding to criticism, the museum and its architecture firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, have dropped the splashiest elements of the expansion plan they disclosed two years ago.”
Jonas Kaufmann Pulls Out Of Met’s New ‘Manon Lescaut’, And Roberto Alagna Steps In
The Met says that Kaufmann has withdrawn from the production, which opens on Feb. 12, due to illness. Alagna, who has never sung the lead tenor role, is stepping out of the Met’s current run of Pagliacci in order to learn it.
Actor Abe Vigoda, 94
“The sad-faced actor who emerged from a workmanlike stage career to find belated fame in the 1970s as the earnest mobster Tessio in The Godfather and the dyspeptic Detective Phil Fish on the hit sitcom Barney Miller, died on Tuesday morning in [New Jersey]. He was 94, having outlived by about 34 years an erroneous report of his death that made him a cult figure.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.26.16
The Virtual Arts – Have It Your Way?
C-NET came away from this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas pronouncing that virtual reality is going to displace traditional porn. … Why should you care? Because virtual reality and its cousin “augmented” reality are getting heavy investment far beyond the porn industry, … and a new generation of immersive viewer-controlled experience is about to take off. …read more
AJBlog: Diacritical Published 2016-01-26
Engaging Early Music
I recently had the opportunity to meet with leaders of several arts groups in Seattle. One was Gus Denhard, executive director of Seattle’s Early Music Guild. In the course of the conversation, he told me … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-01-26
Frank Collett, RIP
Producer Dick Bank reports that pianist Frank Collett died of liver failure yesterday in Pasadena, California. Collett was 74. He led his own trio and in the course of his career worked with Louis Armstrong, … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-01-26
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How We Made The High Line
Two of the designers involved in creating the popular park talk about what the elevated railroad was like before they started working on it, what made their proposal for the project successful, and what they do when a client asks for “another High Line.”
Indonesia To Get Its First International Modern Art Museum
“The private institution will be called the Museum MACAN, for Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, an Indonesian term for archipelago. It is being built and financed by the Indonesian businessman and collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo.”
Why Are Some People Habitually Late?
“There’s no single cause. Chronic lateness is a kind of end-product phenomena. People can have very different sorts of motives and patterns” – several of which are explored here – “that lead them to be chronically late.” One common factor: we they honestly don’t mean to be rude.
Can Shame Be A Positive, Useful Thing? Under The Right Circumstances, Definitely
“Modern American culture is down on shame – it is, we are told, a damaging, useless emotion that we should neither feel ourselves nor make others feel. This is particularly the case when it comes to drug and alcohol addiction. … But in fact, the experience of shame – the feeling that one has failed to live up to one’s own standards – can play a positive role in recovery from addiction, as well as from other kinds of destructive habits.”