“The Santa Fe Opera announced Wednesday that The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, by composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell, is scheduled to debut in 2017. … The piece will explore Jobs’ complicated professional and personal lives … [and] will also delve into the touchy area of his relationship with a woman whose child he initially disowned.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How’s This For A Risky Family Business? Political Stand-Up Comedy In Myanmar
The Moustache Brothers, “active for more than three decades, is renowned in the country for political satire, which still risks a prison sentence for its performers if delivered in Burmese in a public site. Since 2001, the troupe’s members have shared their act from this garage seven nights a week for gatherings of as many as 40 foreigners, who pay the equivalent of $10 each.”
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Met Opera Abandons Blackface For Otello For First Time Since 1891
The Metropolitan Opera said on Tuesday that the new production of Verdi’s Otello that will open its season next month will not use blackface makeup on the white tenor singing the title role, breaking with a performance tradition of more than a century.”
As The Met Abandons Blackface, A Look At The Legacy Of African Americans In Opera
“Nineteenth-century Black singers like Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield and Sissieretta Jones sang opera but gave recitals, because the opera houses weren’t hiring them. Black churches were doing Verdi’s Requiem with all-Black casts and musicians.”
Alan Cheuse, Author And NPR Book Critic, Dead At 75
“[He] published his first short story just before his 40th birthday and went on to write two dozen books, but who became even better known as a longtime NPR book critic” on All Things Considered.
‘We Rip The Band-Aid Off’ Ballet, Says Showrunner Of ‘Flesh And Bone’
Moira Walley-Beckett: “This is the first time we’ve really seen the underbelly of a ballet company. And I feel like a lot of those movies have catered to the very glossy, ephemeral optical illusion that is ballet. And we rip the Band-Aid off.”
‘Athlètes Et Artistes’ – CNN Admires The Men Of The Paris Opera Ballet
“They are ‘les danseurs,’ the professional male ballet dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet. They are the epitome of strength, their bodies acting as machines of poetry with each and every point of their toes.”
The Melancholy Pop Idol Who Haunts China
“There’s another popular saying: Wherever there are Chinese people, there is Teresa Teng’s music. I never appreciated her symbolism as a child, back when her music seemed soft and ubiquitous. But it’s not hard to imagine how Teng’s songs about love and distance spoke to the various migrations and political estrangements throughout the Chinese-speaking world. For immigrants throughout the Chinese diaspora, her music was a reminder of their journeys, an excuse to indulge in nostalgia, three or four minutes at a time.
G.I. Jane Is Missing In Action: Why Does Pop Culture Never Show Women At War?
“In Afghanistan, women in uniform are widely seen in the airports and across bases heading to work. But watch a war movie and the roughly 300,000 women who have deployed in America’s post-9/11 wars are largely missing in action. These untold stories have consequences both for how America sees its women in uniform and how they see themselves.”