James Jorden: “It’s not easy to pin down exactly what makes LoftOpera so unlike the myriad other small opera companies that dot New York, but whatever that disparity might be, it makes all the difference.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Cooper Union Reaches Settlement With NYS Attorney General And Alumni
The agreement doesn’t provide for the return of free tuition – yet – but it does end the current litigation over that issue and provide for outside financial oversight.
Oliver Sacks’s Final Article
“Walter, previously a moderate eater, developed a ravenous appetite. ‘He started to gain weight,’ his wife later told me, ‘and his pants changed three sizes in six months.’ … He was also prone to getting ‘stuck’ in various activities – playing the piano, for example, for eight or nine hours at a time. Even more disquieting was the development of an insatiable sexual appetite.”
The One Interview Elena Ferrante Gave To An American Outlet
At least it was long and meaty enough to be made into a two-part Q&A.
Wadsworth Atheneum In Hartford Puts Final Touches On A Comeback
“On Sept. 19, after a five-year, relatively humble $33 million renovation, the Wadsworth is finally reopening the Morgan Memorial Building … and its European galleries, which have been mostly closed since 2009. … For the first time in 50 years all the Wadsworth’s galleries will be open at once.”
For Whom Should (Or Shouldn’t) Broadway Dim Its Lights? It’s Less Simple A Question Than Ever
“For at least 50 years, New York has honored the passing of lifelong theater-industry participants by briefly dimming the lights of Broadway marquees. But in the social-media era, the decision over whose legacy merits the tradition is kicking up painful public controversy.”
The Sharpest Comedy On Television Aired On HBO This Summer, And You Probably Never Knew It Was There
Francine Prose: “Offhandedly mocking our inadequate, improvisatory foreign policy in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, The Brink is so funny, so inventive – and so fearless in what it has to say about geopolitics – that watching it would be pure pleasure were the events it depicts not so uncomfortably close to the perilous reality of the world in which we live.”
Julie Kent’s New Jobs At ABT
“Julie Kent, the star ballerina who retired as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater in June, is taking on several new roles with the company, including as the artistic director of its summer intensive programs for young dancers.”
Ambiguity – How Did It Get To Be So Valued In Art?
“Above all, how did it come to take on, at least for some, a cloak of liberal righteousness, to shift from being an aesthetic to a moral virtue, as if the text that wasn’t clear, that didn’t state its preferences clearly, were ethically superior to the text that does. In every other sphere of expression ambiguity is a flaw. Clarity is prized.”
Italo Calvino Remembers His Youthful Obsession With Hollywood Movies
“Italian spectators barbarously made entering after the film already started a widespread habit, and it still applies today. We can say that back then we already anticipated the most sophisticated of modern narrative techniques, interrupting the temporal thread of the story and transforming it into a puzzle to put back together piece by piece or to accept in the form of a fragmentary body.”