Roughly one day after he threatened to call off the entire 2012-13 season because he couldn’t get funding issues worked out with Cologne’s city government, Uwe Eric Laufenberg announced that he would step down as the opera house’s Intendant at the end of that season (which is presumably proceeding as planned), two years before the end of his contract.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Yale Rep Gets $18M To Finance New Plays
“The Yale School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theater announced on Wednesday that they had received an $18 million gift – the largest in their history – to finance the creation of new plays and musicals through commissions to writers, developmental workshops and productions at both Yale Rep and other theaters that stage the work.”
Renzo Piano’s ‘Narcissistic’ Malta Project Under Attack In Parliament
The opposition leader described Piano’s plan for the area around City Gate in Valletta – which includes a new Parliament building already under construction – as a “narcissistic” pet project of the Prime Minister and criticized the €80m venture’s financing.
How The Internet Fails Us (Lewis Lapham Explains It All)
“I’m content to regard the Internet as the best and brightest machine ever made by man, but nonetheless a machine with a tin ear and a wooden tongue.”
What Thinking Feels Like, Depicted On Celluloid
“In her playful film, Lines of Thought, Aldworth attempts to answer a befuddling question: how do you describe how it feels to think? It may seem an impossible task, but Aldworth conveys it perfectly. A fast-moving line flits from place to place in a sketched brain – speeding through neurons, pinging through cortices.”
How’s David Hallberg Doing At The Bolshoi? He’s Questioning
“There was this hype of me coming, and this attention of people watching, and expectation. And sometimes I struggle with the thought that I am really not good enough to be in this position. … And it even boils down to these simple steps that I have been doing my whole career. I am doing them so differently now and I am questioning them so differently. … Sometimes I even question: Am I losing who I am? Am I losing what made me as a dancer?”
The Welshman Who’s Helping Jump-Start Indonesian Cinema
“Since he moved to Jakarta four years ago, [Gareth] Evans, a softly-spoken scion of the Brecon Beacons, has resurrected the Indo martial-arts film. His latest, a careening piece of John Woo-esque ultraviolence called The Raid, is winning the country some overdue global exposure.”
Philadelphia Orchestra To Begin China Residency Next Month
“The orchestra’s May 28-June 6 residency and tour of China, details of which were to be announced Wednesday in Beijing and Philadelphia, was hatched in a matter of months – five full orchestral concerts in four cities, master classes, chamber concerts, many other ancillary events, plus plans stretching five years into the future.”
Why Soprano Karita Mattila Is Such A Good Actress
On Uta Hagen: “She is my big idol and hero, and she writes things in those books that everybody should read, especially young singers.”
Sissy Spacek Is Too Sane To Be An Actress At All
On taking classes at the Actors’ Studio: “The irony is that I only studied there several months. I never got into scene class. I remember looking around saying, ‘I’m much too well-adjusted to be doing this’.”