When an audience member in the front row allowed his iPhone to ring loudly for several minutes during the final movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, maestro Alan Gilbert halted the music and stared down the offender until (after another minute) he turned the device off.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ballet San Jose Finally Announces A 2012 Season
After a tumultuous fall and winter – a cancelled production, the stealth dismissal of the founding artistic director, a suddenly announced “partnership” with American Ballet Theater, and the abrupt departure of the board chairman – the company has planned three productions, each to run over a weekend in March, April and May.
Bill T. Jones On The Religious Roots Of His Choreography
“Coming from the background I came from and witnessing my mother’s tearful prayers – talk about ‘aesthetic arrest’ – watching her put herself through this and go into a trance … Well, I thought that art wanted to do the same thing.”
Thomas Quasthoff Retires From Singing
The admired bass-baritone said in a statement, “My health no longer allows me to live up to the high standard that I have always set for my art and myself. I owe a lot to this wonderful profession and leave without a trace of bitterness.”
Sondheim To Write New Songs For Film Version Of Into The Woods
“Oscar-nominated director Rob Marshall is reteaming with Disney for a film adaptation of Into the Woods, the classic 1980s Broadway musical written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. … Lapine is now at work on the script, which Marshall expects to feature new songs by Sondheim.”
Why Doesn’t Ireland Produce Musicals?
“We aren’t lacking in raw materials, after all. Aren’t we the country that brought you Enya, Sinead O’Connor, Westlife and U2? … And it’s not as if we’re short of experimental playwrights, innovative directors or competent performers. … Yet sadly our island seems to be unable – or unwilling – to write, or indeed produce, their own works from the genre.”
Washington National Opera To Finish Ring Cycle, Begin Commissioning Project
After having abandoned the production with one opera left to go, the company announced that it would revive and stage the full Wagner tetralogy in 2016. In addition, WNO is launching a three-tiered New American Works project, beginning next season.
What Makes A New American Opera American, Anyway?
For Washington National Opera music director Philippe Auguin, “the hallmarks of American opera are theatricality, accessibility, directness – all things that set it apart from European contemporary fare.”
Literature Is Played Out – Always Has Been, Always Will Be
“‘We come too late to say anything which has not been said already,’ lamented La Bruyère at the end of the 17th century. The fact that he came too late even to say this (Terence having pipped him to the post back in the 2nd century BC) merely proved his point.”
Bolshoi Ballet’s Resident Loudmouth Dismissed From Ballet Master Post
Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a star dancer who kept himself in the news this fall by publicly insulting both his theater’s renovation and his company’s first foreign member (David Hallberg), has received notice that his teaching contract at the Bolshoi has been terminated.