He wears a suit, tie and cuff links to work each day: “I dress as if I’m going to an office in midtown or on Wall Street or at a law firm, even though what I am really doing is going downstairs to my bunker.” He won’t enter a page into his computer until the almost-final draft (he writes longhand and then types). And he uses dry cleaners’ shirt boards for his outlines (which he sometimes color-codes).
Author: Matthew Westphal
Corella Ballet Schedules US Debut
“[The Segovia-based] classical ballet company founded in 2008 by the much-loved Spanish dancer Ángel Corella (who is also a principal dancer with A.B.T.), will travel to the U.S. for the first time next spring, performing at the New York City Canter March 17-20.”
Flimm To Leave Salzburg Festival One Year Early
Saying that he is “happy and relieved”, festival artistic director Jürgen Flimm “announced Friday he had signed a deal allowing him to quit Salzburg in 2010, a year early, to join the Berlin State Opera.” His successor, Alexander Pereira of the Zurich Opera House, does not begin until October 2011, so a search is on for a one-year interim director.
Orange County PAC Suffers Major Drop In Attendance
“The Orange County Performing Arts Center saw “a decline of 43.1 percent in paid attendance, 53.1 percent in ticket revenue and 36.5 percent fewer performances compared to the previous season.” That said, the center “managed to show an operating surplus of $256,000. Still, it faces a deficit of about $744,000 because of last year’s bond market crisis.”
The Monster That’s Devouring Venice
No, it’s not the rising water. (“So go get boots,” says the mayor.) It’s tourism. 21 million visitors poured into and out of Venice in 2007. The number of hotels and guesthouses has septupled in the last ten years; vegetable sellers, hardware stores and other such urban necessities are being priced out; the cost of living, especially housing, climbs steadily; the population is down to 60,000 and shrinking. “Who will be the last Venetian left?”
A Royalty Fight Over Germany’s Most Popular Beer-Hall Yodel
“The money-spinning power of ‘horlla-rü-di-ri, di-ri, di-ri’, the famous chorus of the Kufsteinlied, which is capable of making even the hardiest of lederhosen-clad Germans go weak at the knees, has been keenly felt this week in a Munich courtroom battle over who owns the copyright.”
‘British Film-Goers Don’t Like British Films And UK Distributors Can’t Get Them Into Cinemas’
So goes the plaint about a new wave of indie movies in Blighty. Says one producer-director, “There is a certain amount of familiarity breeding contempt. This is true of British distributors as well as of British critics. We [the British] tend toward the exotic. If things are too familiar, they are often considered less interesting.”
– And Those British Film-Goers Are Missing An Art-Film Renaissance
Andrew Pulver: “The British don’t do art cinema. Social realism is our thing, or period movies, or rom-coms, or satire. That’s the received wisdom, anyhow. … Until now. Quietly, with little fuss, and almost no critical fanfare, it looks as though we are in the middle of a British art-cinema bonanza, the like of which we haven’t seen for decades.”
A Cache Of Rare Old 78s Discovered In English ‘Stately Home’
While visiting Brodsworth Hall in Yorkshire, a retired recording engineer noticed a disc that turned out to be an excerpt from Bohème recorded by Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in 1908. It was part of a trove that includes violinist Mischa Elman playing Souvenir de Moscou in 1906 and Sousa conducting Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in 1905.
‘One Of The Most Influential Comedy Minds In The English-Speaking World’ (And Most Americans Have Never Heard Of Him)
That would be the prolific Scottish writer-director-producer Armando Ianucci, creator of the new political satire In the Loop (and its BBC-TV progenitor, The Thick of It) and the man who blazed a path for, among others, Jon Stewart, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Colbert, Sacha Baron Cohen and Wag the Dog.