“The Rotterdam Philharmonic said on Tuesday that its principal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin will step down in 2018, his tenth year on the job. The announcement was widely expected, as the conductor has also been juggling directorships at the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal, and is increasingly tapped as a guest conductor.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
New York City Ballet Usher Gets To Design New Production of “Sylphides”
“For Ms. Tammany, an artist by day who moonlights as an usher, the job was a reunion of sorts. She designed La Sylphide when Mr. Martins first staged it 30 years ago for the Pennsylvania Ballet, in a production that was later broadcast on public television. But she said she was stunned when Mr. Martins approached her about doing it again at City Ballet.”
Neil Shicoff Gets An Opera Company To Run – In St. Petersburg
The 65-year-old tenor, said more than once in the past to have been a candidate for the top post at the Vienna State Opera, has been named chief of opera at the Mikhailovsky Theatre which artistic director (and chief funder) Vladimir Kekhman has transformed from poor stepsister to the Mariinsky into one of Russia’s most dynamic opera and ballet houses.
Why Amy Schumer’s Parody Of ‘Twelve Angry Men’ Is Both A Viral Hit And A Brilliant Satire
“The wonderfully absurd universe of the sketch – a woman [Schumer herself] literally on trial for the crime of not being ‘bangable’ – … [is] a parody with a tone that adheres remarkably close to its source material … with the fatal strike coming from the direction you weren’t looking.” (And the cast – Paul Giamatti, Jeff Goldblum, John Hawkes, etc. – is terrific.)
Inside Amy Schumer’s Parody Of ‘Twelve Angry Men’
Schumar: “I was at a party and these guys were talking about Michelle Williams, and they were like, ‘Yeah I don’t think she is hot actually.’ … These guys would be so lucky to even get to have a conversation with her but they were like really deliberating over whether or not they would fuck her. And I was like, ‘You know what, that scenario is never going to present itself, you guys.’ But that word ‘deliberation’ is what made me think, What is the ultimate deliberation? An actual jury deliberating. And I love the movie 12 Angry Men.” (includes video)
Cache Of Mark Twain Newspaper Stories From San Francisco Uncovered
“His topics range from San Francisco police – who at one point attempted, unsuccessfully, to sue Twain for comparing their chief to a dog chasing its tail to impress its mistress – to mining accidents.”
Read Some Of Mark Twain’s Rediscovered San Francisco Columns
To an editor about a previous story: “Please publish it again, and put it in the parentheses where I have marked them, so that people who read with wretched carelessness may know to a dead moral certainty when I am referring to Chief Burke, and also know to an equally dead moral certainty when I am referring to the dog.”
Three Great Cartoonists – Bechdel, Spiegelman, Gaiman – Defend Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award
“Cartoonists tend to stick together because they have to; as Gaiman points out, their work is disproportionately singled out for suppression both abroad and in the U.S., while at the same time often regarded as not ‘serious’ enough to deserve a full-throttle defense.”
Meet The Man Who Plays Big Bird And Oscar The Grouch
A Q&A with Caroll Spinney, 81, who has performed two of Sesame Street‘s most enduring characters for the show’s entire 45-year history.
Alice Notley Wins $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
“Notley, who now lives in Paris, … has published more than 30 books, beginning in 1971 with 165 Meeting House Lane and continuing with two new volumes due this year, Certain Magical Acts and Benediction.”