A 27-year-old manager at the Bank of Alameda (California) has reportedly confessed to embezzling more than $650,000 from an Individual Retirement Account kept by the renowned soprano at the bank.
Author: Matthew Westphal
National Children’s Museum Unveils ‘Green’ Design By Cesar Pelli
“The planned structure is a four-story building with a glass atrium on one corner, a towering wind turbine, a wall of living plants along one exterior side and an interior open courtyard. Other features will include a slip on one of the Potomac piers with science and boating activities, and a gathering place in a nearby woodland.”
London To Host Five-Month Circus Festival
“Arts producer Crying Out Loud has launched the inaugural City Circ season, a new five-month showcase of contemporary circus designed to raise the profile of the art form in London. The programme will run from this month through to August and will be presented by a network of 20 venues across the capital, including Camden’s Roundhouse, Lyric Hammersmith, National Theatre, Shunt Vaults, the E4 Udderbelly at the Southbank Centre, Greenwich Dance Agency and Polka Theatre.”
Oakland Ballet Founder Quits (Again)
“Ronn Guidi has resigned as artistic director of the Oakland Ballet Company and as teacher and proprietor of the Oakland Ballet Academy, leaving the future of both institutions uncertain. […] This is not the first sudden retirement from Guidi, who founded the Oakland Ballet in 1965 and led it to international repute with revivals of rare Ballets Russes masterpieces in the 1990s. In 1998, backstage during Nutcracker, Guidi scrawled his resignation on a napkin.”
Construction Resumes On Cal State Northridge PAC
“The state’s budget crisis had brought construction of the $125-million 1,700-seat [Valley] Performing Arts Center to a temporary halt in December, sparking concerns that completion might be delayed. But in March, workers were back on the job.”
The Twitter-An-Opera-Plot Contest Is Back!
“Billed as ‘the most fun opera nerds can have in 140 characters,’ the game involves creating a witty, brilliant, and accurate precis of an opera plot. And this time [following a surprisingly popular first round last month] there are prizes – lovely tickets from a dazzling galaxy of opera houses in the US and Britain.” There’s even a celebrity judge: soprano Danielle de Niese.
Paavo Järvi Convicted Of Driving While Intoxicated
The Cincinnati Symphony music director, who was found asleep at the wheel while stopped in the middle of an intersection late one night last month, pled no contest to the charge. A judge “sentenced [him] to six months probation, suspended his driver’s license for six months and ordered the conductor to spend three days in a driver’s intervention program.”
Nabokov’s Unfinished Novel To Be Published This Fall
The Original of Laura, whose manuscript consists of 138 handwritten index cards, will be released as a Penguin Classics hardback in November. Penguin “will publish all the cards in the book, with a transcript of text [of each card] on the opposite page.” The company plans to republish all of Nabokov’s backlist as well.
Curry And Identity
“But does food act like a historical text? What is food a record of exactly? …[F]ood is not a reliable historical source, for it is a truth universally acknowledged that most curries dished up in [British “balti”] restaurants are invented for the ‘white’ consumer. In Urdu, balti means ‘bucket’ and has more to do with Jack, Jill and the hill, than with cooking.”
Mozart: It’s Got A Beat, But You Can’t Dance To It
Alastair Macaulay: “George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton seldom used Mozart, with good reason. They recognized that Mozart’s music, even though it abounds in dance rhythms, is often characterized by a structural and expressive subtlety that will make any response in movement look trite. But where angels fear to tread …”