“Where many contraltos are endowed with the lightish, dusky equivalent of a viola, her voice – immense, deep, velvety and burnished – put a cello at her command. She was also praised for her sensitive musicianship, powerful dramatic characterizations and impeccable diction.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Should Pop Stars Stay Off The Broadway Stage? (Yeah, Most Of Them)
Alexis Soloski: “They have the moves and the range, but most favour a straightforward, indicative performance style that has only a tangential relationship to stage acting. … Then again, there are singers that one finds so delicious, so charismatic that it shouldn’t matter whether or not they can act.”
Britain’s Mid-Afternoon Bhangra Raves
“Their parents thought they were studying. But thousands of British Asians spent the ’80s and ’90s dancing – before heading home for tea.”
Occupy Damien Hirst! Protesters Tag Sculpture At Tate Modern
“The lazily scrawled navy graffiti stretches no higher than arm’s reach on the thigh of Damien Hirst’s famous sculpture Hymn. It is the Occupy movement’s latest attempt to take action against the free market [sic] and, in this instance, its consequences on art.”
Taking ‘Appropriated Art’ To A Whole New Level – Meaning Vandalism And Larceny
Stolen Pieces, an installation in London by Brooklyn-based artists Eva and Franco Mattes, consists entirely of little fragments of other artworks – by the likes of Beuys, Oldenburg, Koons, Rauschenberg, and even Marcel Duchamp – which the Matteses “appropriated” during the 1990s (meaning that the statute of limitations on the thefts has run out).
Minnesota Orchestra Faces Year Of Living Dangerously
“Last December, the organization reported its biggest annual deficit ever. In June, the band evacuates Orchestra Hall for a yearlong face-lift of its iconic home on Nicollet Mall. A shortened 2012-13 season opens in October in the acoustically challenged Minneapolis Convention Center.” Then there are the upcoming contract negotiations …
Marta Eggerth, Operetta Star, Still Sharp And Still Singing At 100
“People ask me, How is it to be 100? I say, I don’t know. I have no standard of comparison. You must ask me when I am 200 what it was like to be 100, and then I will be able to tell you.”
Soprano Ailyn Pérez Wins 2012 Richard Tucker Award
The $30,000 prize “is conferred annually on an American opera singer at the threshold of a major international career.” Pérez’s husband, tenor Stephen Costello, received the award in 2009.
Meet Hong Kong’s Hot Young Choreographer (He’s Over 40)
“Strictly speaking, Dominic Wong isn’t a dancer. He’s a character. And, there’s little dispute, a comedic one.”
Street Walking: Figuring Out What Pedestrians Do, And Why
For instance, “the way walking speeds are slower at midday than before or after work; the way people don’t like to maintain the same walking speed as a stranger next to them; the way tourists walk in inappropriately spread out groups” (New Yorkers’ pet peeve); “crosswalk bulge” and “minimizing dissatisfaction.”