Lucy Maud Montgomery, Madeleine L’Engle, S.E. Hinton, J.K. Rowling … the list goes on. Two-thirds of the finalists for NPR Books’ 100 Best Ever Teen Novels were written by women.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Leicester Mayor Calls City’s Theatre A ‘Disastrous Project’
“Leicester’s elected mayor has described the city’s Curve theatre as ‘the most expensive and most disastrous project this city has ever seen in its history’.”
Wooster Group Tries Shakespeare For The First Time – With The RSC, No Less
The two companies, whose styles couldn’t be more different, are playing the warring Trojans and Greeks in an upcoming Troilus and Cressida. Longtime Wooster actress Kate Valk: “It took us two weeks to read it through once. We were looking everything up and watching movie versions to remind ourselves of the characters, because we’d get so lost in it.”
Judging An Artwork’s Authenticity In The Courtroom
“[L]awyers agree that as art prices rise, so does the temptation to turn to the courts to settle disputes over authenticity. One result is that judges and juries with no background in art can frequently be asked to arbitrate among experts who have devoted their lives to parsing a brush stroke.”
Argentina Builds A Sistema Of Its Own
“A government program” – modeled after Venezuela’s now-famous Sistema – “has set up youth orchestras and choirs in underprivileged areas throughout the country. The instructors and conductors say the students have surpassed their expectations in the orchestra, and their teachers at school say they even notice positive results in the classroom thanks to their participation in the music program.”
Was This The Jacobean Borges? (Borges Thought So)
“Back when the English language was still young and impressionable, a London-born physician who took up the pen as a gentleman’s hobby made quite a dent, fathering a dictionary page’s worth of words we still use and tend to think of as ageless – ‘medical,’ ‘literary,’ ‘suicide,’ ‘exhaustion,’ ‘hallucination’ and ‘coma’ among them.”
Jonas Kaufmann Saves Salzburg Festival’s Bohème At Very Last Minute
Piotr Beczala, who had gotten terrific reviews for his opening night performance as Rodolfo, lost his voice just before Saturday night’s performance – and Salzburg generally doesn’t hire understudies. So Kaufmann, in town to sing Bacchus in Ariadne auf Naxos the following afternoon, was rushed into the pit (with his supper) to sing the role as Beczala mimed it onstage.
What Can A Concerned Soul Do To Save Pianos From The Scrapyard?
“The emotions evoked by the deaths of used pianos are powerful, and they came flooding in response to a recent article in The New York Times about their frequent disposal and the reasons for it. But when it comes to keeping old pianos alive, owners find that their feelings collide with the reality of expensive repairs and inexpensive, easily available brand-new replacements. Still, a few options exist.”
Marguerite Piazza, Opera Singer And ’50s Pop Chanteuse, Dead At 86
‘Well before marketing executives came up with the term ‘crossover artist,’ Miss Piazza became a pop phenomenon via the opera stage. She moved easily from the Metropolitan Opera to Broadway to television variety shows.”
Fifty Shades Of Grey Is Now Britain’s Bestselling Book Of All Time
“The erotic novel has sold in excess of 5.3m copies in print and ebook – more than The Highway Code or Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.”