Katori Hall, author of The Mountaintop: “Perhaps it was because of my previous visit” – when she experienced the particular Russian style of racism – “that I felt even more determined that a play about Dr. King, a man who preached about a colorblind world, would resonate loudly in the white, snowy streets of Russia. I was on a mission.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How To Save The Taj Mahal?
“A debate rages over preserving the awe-inspiring, 350-year-old monument that now shows signs of distress from pollution and shoddy repairs.”
Chicago Gets A Baroque Opera Company
“Not so many months ago, the Chicago cellist and viola da gamba player Craig Trompeter … thought: Why not start a local company specializing in ‘authentic’ stage realizations of neglected as well as familiar operas from the 17th and 18th centuries?” So he did, and Haymarket Opera will debut in September, with a second production next February.
Sacramento Opera And Philharmonic Seriously Consider Merger
“The leaders of the Sacramento Opera and Sacramento Philharmonic are discussing a merger as a way to secure their futures – and potentially grow – despite a troubled economy.”
Britain’s Poetry Society Rehires Its Former Director
“Judith Palmer has been reinstated as director of the Poetry Society after some of the country’s best known poets, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and George Szirtes, came together to call for her to be returned to the post she resigned from earlier this summer.”
How The Telegraph Was Made Possible By A Failed Painting Career
“In November 1829, a 38-year-old American artist, Samuel F. B. Morse, set sail on a 3,000-mile, 26-day voyage from New York, bound for Paris. He intended to realize the ambition recorded on his passport: his occupation, Morse stated, was ‘historical painter’.”
Seeing Into The Mind With Mirrors
“You probably look in a mirror every day without thinking about it. But mirrors can reveal a great deal about the brain, with implications for psychology, clinical neurology and even philosophy. They can help us explore the way the brain puts together information from different sensory channels such as vision and somatic sensations (touch, muscle and joint sense).”
How Twyla Tharp Retooled Come Fly Away
“Among other changes, she got rid of the intermission, shortened the length to 80 minutes and changed both the beginning and the ending. The musical also has a stunning trick that makes the Sinatra vocals sound live. The onstage band accompanies the singer as if he were giving a concert.”
Saving The Hitchcock Nine
In 2012, “if all goes to plan, nine of the 10 films Hitchcock directed during the 1920s will be seen as no one has seen them since their first release, restored thanks to the BFI National Archive’s Rescue the Hitchcock 9 project.”
Did Picasso Invent The French Riviera?
Jonathan Jones: “[If] French 19th-century artists such as Degas defined the traditional seaside, it was Picasso in the 1920s who gave a visual form to the modern hedonism of sand and sensuality sur la plage. It was in that decade that the French Riviera became the image of sultry decadence, a mythic status it would keep through the 20th century.”