Kathryn Lewek just finished a run as Eurydice in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld at the Salzburg Festival, one of her first performances since giving birth earlier this year. After a few German and Austrian critics, as she puts it, “[wrote about] postpartum mom-bod instead of reviewing the show,” Lewek took to Twitter to call them out (not by name). Manuel Brug of Die Welt (who had described Lewek and her colleagues as “fat women in tight corsets spreading their legs”) responded to Lewek’s complaint by writing, “If she is so sensitive why is she showing herself the whole time in this corset?” And the just wrath of the Twitterverse rained down upon him. – BBC
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why Are There So Few Women Running Classical Music Organizations, And What’s Happening To Change That
“In general, [new Seattle Opera general director Christina Schippelmann] and others say, the absence of women in top positions results more from systemic factors than intentional discrimination. Rising to the highest levels in the arts means pushing through a series of lower-status, lower-paid jobs, often bouncing all over the planet. Arts managers work long hours but may not earn enough to afford a nanny or to have the other parent stay at home.” – The Seattle Times
‘Just As Some Novels Supply Their Own Reviews, So Many Reviews Supply Their Own Novels’
Mary-Kay Wilmers, co-founder and longtime editor of the London Review of Books, takes apart the ways that book reviewers do their work. – Literary Hub
Did the New York Festival of Song make it ‘back to the U.S.S.R.?’
NYFOS’s annual August concert at the tip of Long Island’s North Fork is always adventurous, even by its standards. This year’s program set conventional art song (Bizet, Ned Rorem) alongside the likes of Cole Porter, Bob Telson, and (yes) Lennon and McCartney. – David Patrick Stearns
Why The Shakers Danced, And Why Their Dancing Scandalized Other American Protestants
“Shaker dance both embodied and performed a gender-egalitarian community, one whose primary method of reproduction was not sexual.” (They increased their numbers through recruitment, for which their singing and dancing were effective tools.) “But their worship practices were reviled as both promiscuous and racially aberrant.” – JSTOR Daily
The First TV Show Made Specifically For Watching On Smartphones
Content, a seven-episode series produced by the other ABC (that’s the Australian Broadcasting Corp.), “is a comedy about a narcissistic millennial determined to become an online influencer, no matter what it takes … The high concept is that it unfolds in real time, entirely from the perspective of the protagonist’s smartphone.” – The Guardian
Hollywood Director Joel Schumacher Is Frank About A Lot, Including An Astounding Sex Life, But He Will Not Kiss And Tell
In a Q&A, the director of St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, and Phantom of the Opera talks about his own wild youth (he began drinking at 9 and having sex, mostly with men, at 11, and he insists he was not a victim of abuse), his celebrity adulthood in fashion and film, the good and the difficult actors he’s directed, and having made critical flops that were box-office hits. But which famous people he’s slept with? No way. – Vulture
The Atlantic’s Takedown Of ‘What The Constitution Means To Me’
Staff writer Andrew Ferguson: “By play’s end, it’s become clear that if the young [Heidi] Schreck did indeed love the Constitution, it’s because she misunderstood it; and if her passion for the document has cooled as she’s gotten older, it’s because she’s transcended her earlier misunderstanding to misunderstand it even more.” – The Atlantic
Afghanistan Had A Rich Film History Until The Taliban Came. This Crew Is Rescuing What Survived
“An elite team of film archivists here is working to conserve [reels of film] as part of a years-long government program that aims to digitize about a century’s worth of Afghan documentaries and films over the next six months.” – The Washington Post
Composer Mario Davidovsky, Electronic Music Pioneer, Dead At 85
“Like many of his fellow composers in the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Davidovsky was drawn to the new possibilities offered by technology. But he was uneasy with the prospect of music that was immune to human interpretation. Beginning in 1963 with Synchronisms No. 1 for flute and tape, he coaxed electronic sounds into partnership with traditional instruments to create musical pas-de-deux that were full of mystery and drama.” – The New York Times