The flames aren’t raging only in Brazil: there have been major wildfires in lowland Bolivia for weeks, and they have damaged and destroyed ancient paintings that date back as for as 1500 BC in and around the town of Roboré in the Santa Cruz region. – Artnet
Author: Matthew Westphal
Eleven More Women Say Plácido Domingo Kissed, Groped, And Pursued Them In Opera Houses — And Management Knew
Additionally, “several … backstage employees described for the AP how they strove to shield young women from the star as administrators looked the other way.” (These include staffers at Los Angeles Opera, where Domingo remains General Director.) “Taken together, their stories reinforce a picture of an industry in which Domingo’s behavior was an open secret and young women were left to fend for themselves in the workplace.” – AP
Why L.A. Opera’s Investigation Of Plácido Domingo — Its Boss — Will Probably Be No Help
“These kinds of investigations historically have raised more questions than they have answered, leaving victims and the public in the dark about what behavior was documented in the inquiry, who might share some responsibility for wrongdoing and whether institutional problems that allowed misconduct to fester have been, or will be, rectified.” Exhibit A: New York City Ballet’s investigation of longtime head Peter Martins, which some former dancers suggest was a deliberate cover-up. – Los Angeles Times
This Taiwanese Comedian Takes On The One Topic Others On The Island Won’t Go Near
His weekly satire program, The Night Night Show, has been on television for not quite 18 months, and already Brian Tseng has become a big star. Why? Likely because he’ll talk and joke openly about mainland China, a subject most Taiwanese avoid. – 1843 Magazine
When A Cell Phone Goes Off During A Play, Keep Quiet And Let It Ring, Says Chicago Tribune Critic
Chris Jones recounts what happened at a recent Broadway performance of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal when a cell phone went off, repeatedly, and seemed to make Tom Hiddleston cry without breaking character. It was a powerful. ambiguous moment — until the audience began to call out the phone and its owner. – Chicago Tribune
How A Small-Town New England Summer Festival Became A Major Feeder For New York’s Theatre Season
“Seven transfers in one season puts [the Williamstown Theater Festival] at the top of the list of New York stage feeders; no single theater, let alone one that’s lit only 50 days a year, comes close. And yet the achievement does not mean that the festival has strayed as far from its original vision as that might suggest.” As Williamstown artistic director Mandy Greenfield tells Jesse Green (who once worked there himself), “We’re not chasing Broadway. We’re chasing a way of working.” – The New York Times
At DC’s Libraries, Homeless Patrons Served By Outreach Officers Who Were Once Unhoused Themselves
“In 2014, the D.C. Public Library system hired Jean Badalamenti as assistant manager of health and human services to help the city’s 25 libraries better serve as a resource for the city’s roughly 6,500 homeless residents. Early last year, she pulled three ‘peer specialists’,” all with personal experience of homelessness, to help guide unhoused library patrons to services. – The Washington Post
Michael Rakowitz, Whose Work Is About Iraq, Refugees, And ISIS, Wins $100K Nasher Prize For Sculpture
His grandparents were Iraqi Jews who fled Baghdad in 1941, and much of his work is inspired by their experiences. He’s most famous for his replica, placed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2018, of an Assyrian lamassu (a winged bull with a human head) that was destroyed by ISIS. – The Dallas Morning News
Have African Artworks Been Safer In Europe Than They Would Have Been In Africa? Maybe Not, Suggest Storage Conditions In German Museum
“Many of the artifacts that will be on display in the Humboldt Forum, a huge new museum under construction in a rebuilt Berlin palace, had for years been stored in less-than-ideal conditions. [A] report featured searing depictions of flooded storage rooms and depots choked with toxic dust.” – The New York Times
Classical Music Isn’t A Meritocracy. It’s ‘A Job, A Shitty Job.’
Kate Wagner: “Classical music is cruel not because there are winners and losers, first chairs and second chairs, but because it lies about the fact that these winners and losers are chosen long before the first moment a young child picks up an instrument. … And if you bow out of this gladiatorial arena, where only the affluent and well-connected are armed, like I did, like many of my friends did, you are understood to be a failure who didn’t try hard enough.” – The Baffler