“The 652-seat opera house, which will reopen September 21, was closed in 2007 to overhaul the heating and electricity systems and refurbish technical warehousing at an overall cost of 13 million euros (18 million dollars). Built essentially of wood, it was inaugurated in 1770 for the wedding of then-to-be King Louis XVI.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Farrah Fawcett, 62, Model, Actress, Symbol
Alessandra Stanley: “[H]er last poignant appearances sometimes obscure a smaller, more gratifying story line of a celebrated beauty who worked against type to construct a more dignified second act. Long before Charlize Theron gained weight to make Monster and Nicole Kidman put on a fake nose to play Virginia Woolf, Ms. Fawcett scrubbed off her tawny good looks to play battered – and battering – women in The Burning Bed and Extremities.”
Farrah’s Power Over A Generation Of Pubescent Boys
“No matter what anyone might try and claim today, Charlie’s Angels was an abysmal way to kill an hour. … The show, though, wasn’t the point. (At least that, I suspect, today’s youth would understand.) Watching Charlie’s Angels, having the FFM poster on your wall, clipping magazine pictures of the Angels in their bikinis and hanging them on the inside of your locker – these were more like badges, a way of participating in pop culture with as much sexual knowing as you could muster.”
Why Do Celebrities Stay Famous Regardless Of Their Talent?
Because “people need something to talk about. The human desire to find common ground in conversation pushes us to discuss already popular people,” says a Stanford professor. To test this hypothesis, the research team turned not to the unquantifiable Paris Hilton and her ilk, but to the statistics-rich realm of professional baseball.
That Lagerfeld Dying Swan Tutu? It Sank Its Ballerina.
“It takes a lot to make English National Ballet principal dancer Elena Glurdjidze look awkward, but designer Karl Lagerfeld managed it last week. … Despite superficial points in common, the fashion designer is not the ballerina’s natural ally.”
Scotland’s Stimulus Package For The Arts
“The Scottish government has announced details of a £5 million package of funds aimed at helping the arts and cultural sector through the current economic downturn.” The package includes a new £1.5m Digital Media Fund, a “new £1m Odd Fellows scheme … to support collaborations of artists from across different sectors,” and support for “entrepreneurs” and “rural innovation.”
Manchester’s Oldest Theatre To Host Performances Once Again
“Manchester’s oldest surviving performance venue” – the 164-year-old Theatre Royal – “is to get a theatrical revival after 88 years of use as a cinema, bingo hall and nightclub, if proposals by the city’s Library Theatre company are given the green light.”
Betty Allen, 82, Mezzo-Soprano, Teacher, Administrator
She “was part of the first great wave of African-American singers to appear on the world’s premier stages in the postwar years. Active from the 1950s to the 1970s, she performed with the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the opera companies of Houston, Boston, San Francisco, Santa Fe, N.M., and Buenos Aires, among others.”
Dubai’s ‘Cut-And-Paste Urbanism’
Christopher Hawthorne: “Like many first-time visitors, I expected to find in Dubai a messy, vital hybrid of architectural and urban strategies, reflecting the city’s history as a regional crossroads and trading center. I could hardly have been more wrong. …
It is, instead, carved into a series of separate, perfectly ordered miniature cities, each performing a remarkably persuasive imitation of the place that inspired it.”
France Is McDonald’s No. 2 Market? How??
“Indeed, the quarter-pounded conquest of France was not the result of some fiendish American plot to subvert French food culture. It was an inside job, and not merely in the sense that the French public was lovin’ it – the architects of McDonald’s strategy in France were French.”