Last week the opera house’s incoming superintendent leaked to Corriere della sera that Riccardo Chailly would become music director there when the incumbent, Daniel Bareboim, departs in 2017. Chailly then responded that nothing was settled at all. Now someone else (evidently an orchestra member) has told La Repubblica that Fabio Luisi is the preferred candidate.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Chicago Symphony Breaks Its Fundraising And Box Office Records
“The orchestra’s parent body, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, reported record-breaking fundraising for a third consecutive year, along with record ticket sales.” The organization did post a deficit for the year, though it was down 87% from the previous year.
What Scares Audra McDonald?
“Oh, roles scare me – the fear of abject failure. Judy Garland always said: ‘Every time I get on stage, they’re going to find out I don’t actually want to do it.’ And I kind of feel the same way.”
You Never Know What’s Going To Come Out Of His Mouth: Ned Rorem At 90
“Other people turn 90. I still think of myself as the youngest person at the party,” says the notoriously candid composer who was the beau of gay Paree 60 years ago. Other Ned-rageous bons mots: “Why would we live in the first place if we’re going to die?” “The woman across the street just threw her baby out the window.” “Are they paying royalties?”
Is Beverly Hills’s New Arts Center Snubbing L.A. Actors?
Southern California casting directors are calling for a boycott of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Their beef is that the Wallis is only casting one show in-house this season, and for that one they hired a New York casting director. The SoCal theater community is worrying that the Wallis may become just one more venue for touring productions.
The “Personal Reason” Cleveland Museum Director David Franklin Resigned
It isn’t pretty.
The Oscars Do Matter (Some), Despite The Cineastes’ (Justified) Grousing
Andrew O’Hehir: “The Oscars are simultaneously a vapid, soul-sucking vacuum that takes up way too much bandwidth in our culture, and also a central cultural and political text that’s overloaded with all kinds of meanings.”
The French Revolution And the Cult Of Genius
“Only with the Revolution could a myth of revolutionary genius emerge, and with the propagation of that myth was born a possibility, still fledgling, but soon to be fulfilled: that genius might be used as the basis of political power, celebrated not only in death but in life, employed to justify an extraordinary privilege and license.”
How Book Publishers Pick The Lowbrow Hits In The 21st Century
“Historically, even editors of tasteless books still played a taste-making role, relying on their guts to decide” what might become a hit. “Today, the public has already indicated what interests it, via the Internet, and the editor just has to be savvy enough and shameless enough to give the rabble what it wants.
Why Judy Blume, Jules Feiffer, Maya Angelou Et Al. Needn’t Fret About Education Reform
“This morning, over 120 children’s book authors and illustrators sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing concern for ‘our readers,’ a.k.a. tots through tweens. The undersigned… say they fear the preponderance of testing in American schools keeps children from learning to love to read.” Nora Caplan-Bricker looks at what the letter got right and wrong.