The Downton Abbey heartthrob “is good-looking, intellectually gifted, charming, witty, adept at being unassuming, and doesn’t look ridiculous in his newsboy cap. While at Cambridge University, which he attended on scholarship, he got the first break of his career – playing Macbeth opposite Rebecca Hall, the daughter of celebrated stage director Sir Peter Hall.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Walter Carsen, 100, One Of Canada’s Greatest Arts Philanthropists
“His name is forever entwined with the arts in Canada. The National Ballet of Canada’s home is the Walter Carsen Centre. He gave the Art Gallery of Ontario the Walter Carsen Reading Room in its new reference library. The Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing arts recognizes lifetime careers in dance, theatre and music.”
James Levine Says He’ll Return To Conducting
“Defying opera world doubters who thought he was too ill, weak or disengaged, the longtime and much loved music director of the Metropolitan Opera plans to return to the podium for the first time in two years, for a May 19 performance by the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and for three productions at the opera house next season.”
Almeida Theatre Head Michael Attenborough To Step Down
His 11-year tenure as artistic director of the London venue “has seen the theatre overturn a sizeable deficit while producing more than twice as many premieres as his predecessors.”
Iran Develops A Separate, ‘Halal’ Internet
“For years, Iranian officials have talked about creating a ‘halal’ internet – a religiously acceptable internal network isolated from the World Wide Web. Its purpose, they claim, would be to provide national cybersecurity and promote Islamic moral values.”
Major Generational Change In British Ballet
Within weeks of each other, new artistic directors have begun their jobs at three major companies: Kevin O’Hare at the Royal Ballet, Tamara Rojo at English National Ballet, and Christopher Hampson at Scottish Ballet. “All three took over from long-standing predecessors, raising the expectation that they will review what is danced and where it is performed. However, choosing repertories and venues is an evolutionary, not revolutionary, process, and more difficult than it sounds.”
Metropolitan Museum Puts Catalogs Online
“[The] museum on Friday began MetPublications, an online resource that will allow users to search more than 600 catalogs, journals and museum bulletins by title, keyword, publication type, theme or collection. Of that number, 368 are out-of-print catalogs and publications.”
Remembrance Of Things To Come (Why Human Memory Is Flawed)
Researchers “believe that human memory didn’t evolve so that we could remember but to allow us to imagine what might be … suggesting that every time we think about a possible future, we tear up the pages of our autobiographies and stitch together the fragments into a montage that represents the new scenario” – but corrupting some of those fragments in the process.
Man Arrested For Harassment Of Louisville Ballet Members
“A Louisville man has been arrested after police say he harassed dancers at the Louisville Ballet to such an extent that they feared for their safety.”
Emir Kusturica’s Bosnian History Theme Park
“In one of the most beautiful spots in the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia’s most celebrated film director … [is erecting] a town within a town that will echo in wood and stone the region’s greatest work of fiction. Published in 1945 by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina tells the violent story of Bosnia through events on and around Visegrad’s magnificent 16th-century Ottoman bridge.”