After burning down (for the third time) in the 1850s, “the theatre was reopened in time for the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in 1856 – and [had] not been renovated since.” (Filling in the space under the auditorium with concrete in the 1950s did ruin the acoustics, though.) By 2005, “there were fears the building would collapse completely.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Biloxi’s New Museum (Designed By Frank Gehry, No Less) Isn’t Working Out
“After surviving Hurricane Katrina, the gulf oil spill and an economy that has battered the tourist trade,” the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art “is almost out of cash, hurt by fewer visitors than it had hoped for, higher operating costs than it expected and less city support than it had counted on.”
Excavation Of Elizabethan Theatre In London Loses Funding
“Plans to excavate the remaining third of the Rose Theatre on London’s Bankside and develop the site into a permanent exhibition and performance space have been dealt a blow after its bid for a £2.1 million Lottery grant was rejected.”
Frank Foster, Lead Saxophonist For Count Basie’s Band, Dead At 82
“[He] joined the Basie big band as a tenor saxophonist in 1953, just as the group was returning to its glory established two decades before. He was a spirited soloist whose bold playing brought a fresh bebop-accented flair to the orchestra, and he became one of the ensemble’s leading writers and arrangers.”
Toronto’s New Summer Music Festival Cancels Concerts It Can’t Afford
The multiple-genre BlackCreek Summer Music Festival, launched in June in an outdoor tennis stadium, has developed some cash-flow problems due to lower-than-expected ticket sales. A soul concert and a classical performance wth Denyce Graves and Lorin Maazel have been called off; an August opera concert featuring Roberto Alagna is on hold.
A Six-Point Plan To Fix Humanities Graduate Schools
“The journalist and writer Anya Kamenetz once said that graduate students are ‘really smart suckers,’ and I – as a Ph.D. who teaches at a liberal arts college – couldn’t agree more. … Now I’d like to suggest a plan for reforming higher education in the humanities that could, someday, make graduate education a responsible, ethical option for … students everywhere.”
Ballet BC’s Fundraising And Finances Stabilize
“Ballet B.C. has announced it has reached its goal of raising $300,000 in its spring fundraising campaign, which ran between January and June. Meeting the target is integral to the company’s plan to gradually rebuild itself and create a new stability after facing a financial crisis that almost destroyed it in late 2008.”
NY City Ballet’s Saratoga Season Attendance And Income Up
“Attendance for the two-week season, which ran from July 5 to 16, is projected to be 36,800, up 7 percent from last year; ticket sales for 2011 are projected to be $936,000, up eight percent.”
Pop-Up Theatre: Now Even England’s National Theatre Is Doing It
NT associate director Ben Power: “There’s a certain energy that comes from knowing that a space that was built and used as something else is being inhabited by a particular performance. That both performers and audience are interlopers or invaders in someone else’s space. The idea that the space will revert to another use after the final show.”
In Defense Of The “Um, Uh” Pause
“In the history of oratory and public speaking, the notion that good speaking requires umlessness is actually a fairly recent, and very American, invention. It didn’t emerge as a cultural standard until the early 20th century, when the phonograph and radio suddenly held up to speakers’ ears all the quirks and warbles that, before then, had flitted by.”