“The group, NYCO Renaissance, announced Wednesday that it would mount Puccini’s Tosca – the first production City Opera ever did, back in 1944 – Jan. 20-24 at the Rose Theater. … The group originally hoped to mount a lavish production by Franco Zeffirelli but now plans to use a historical, more economical one based on the designs Adolf Hohenstein created for the opera’s premiere in 1900 in Rome.” (But yes, the group’s future plans do include new and less-performed works.)
Author: Matthew Westphal
Marina Abramović Sued By Former Lover And Collaborator Ulay
“Belgrade-born Abramović and Ulay, real name Frank Uwe Laysiepen, were lovers and co-creators for more than a decade before their separation in 1988 … Ulay [has now] launched a lawsuit, to be heard in Amsterdam later this month, in which he claims Abramović has violated a contract they signed in 1999 covering works they had created together.”
Yeah, I Know It’s Not So Easy: Aziz Ansari On ‘Brownface’ And Casting Minority Roles
“I had to cast an Asian actor for Master of None, and it was hard. When you cast a white person, you can get anything you want: ‘You need a white guy with red hair and one arm? Here’s six of ’em!’ But for an Asian character, there were startlingly fewer options. … But I still wonder if we are trying hard enough.”
‘The Stradivari Of Sticks,’ Baton Maker Richard Horowitz, Dead At 91
“[He] was a renowned musician in his own right, a retired principal timpanist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. But in the rarefied artistic circles that were his orbit for more than half a century, he was also known as a maker of conductors’ batons, a fine trade plied by only a handful of people around the globe. … His art married the skills of a physician, a palm reader, a carpenter and a Savile Row tailor.”
Akram Khan To Create His First Classical Ballet
Choreographer and dancer Akram Khan is to create his first full classical ballet with a new version of Giselle, which will open in Manchester in 2016. … After Manchester, Giselle will move to the Bristol Hippodrome and Mayflower Theatre in Southampton before being staged at Sadler’s Wells in London next November.”
A Dozen Or More Jackson Pollock Canvases Could Be Fake: Report
“Reports written by Nicholas Eastaugh, the director of Art Analysis & Research (formerly Art Access & Research), examin[ed] the pigments used in 23 paintings. Of those, 12 were found to include CI Pigment Yellow 74, which was not commercially available before the Abstract Impressionist artist died in 1956.”
This Book Was Voted The Most Influential Academic Text In History
“After a list of the top 20 academic books was pulled together by expert academic booksellers, librarians and publishers …, the public was asked to vote on what they believed to be the most influential.” The winner – a volume arguably at the very heart of America’s culture wars – finished well ahead of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the complete works of Shakespeare, Plato’s The Republic, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
How Do You Tell The Difference Between Philanthropy And A Tax Write-Off?
There’s Eli Broad’s new museum in Los Angeles. Paul Allen’s soon-to-open nonprofit exhibition space in Seattle. The sale by Audey Irmas – her foundation, to be precvise – of her Cy Twombly blackboard. “How can anyone from the outside tell the difference between a collector’s cultural philanthropy and his personal tax strategy?”
How The Metaphor Of ‘The Cloud’ Changed Our Attitude Toward The Internet
“Around 2010, casual Internet users were introduced to the idea that the digital world around them could be understood in terms of the ‘cloud.’ As a metaphor, the cloud seems easy to grasp: our data is somewhere in the ether, floating, drifting and wireless, available wherever and whenever we need it. … [Yet] how did we come to place our faith in a symbol that is so ephemeral – all vapor and crystal?”
Bolshoi’s Chief Troublemaker Took Over St. Petersburg’s Top Ballet School – And It’s Turned Out Surprisingly Well
The appointment of Nikolai Tsiskaridze to the directorship of the Vaganova Academy (after the Bolshoi Ballet’s management declined to renew his contract) “was controversial at the time, and many high ranking dancers and administrators spoke out against the Bolshoi dancer being given the top job at the Mariinsky school, a school that he hadn’t come through himself. However, after two years the consensus seems to be that he is doing a good job and is popular both inside and outside the revered Academy’s walls.”