Said conservative company’s plans include Tosca, The Merry Widow and Marriage of Figaro, but there are also rare Verdi (Ernani), Janácek (Katya with Karita Mattila), and the Fausts of Gounod and Berlioz.
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘Thriller’ Video Director Sues Michael Jackson
“John Landis has sued Michael Jackson for allegedly failing to pay profits over the last four years from Jackson’s “Thriller” video, which Landis co-wrote and directed in 1983… The action accuses Jackson of ‘fraudulent, malicious and oppressive conduct’ in failing to pay Landis 50% of the net proceeds.”
Vagabond Latin American Art Collection To Find A Home
The Cisneros Collection, considered one of the best gatherings of Latin American painting in existence, has spent the last ten years “lent out in tranches to dozens of museums in North and South America.” Now the Cisneros foundation’s trustees have decided to find a permanent home or homes for the art.
Madrid To Build Convention Center Covered In Solar Panels
“Designed by Mansilla+Tunon and nearly 330 feet tall, it will have six stories of convention spaces, totalling over one million square feet; its largest auditorium will seat 5,000. The building itself will be shaped like a solar lens (or the Death Star, or a golf ball, depending on your perspective).”
Irving Bush, 78, Jazz And Classical Trumpeter and L.A. Phil Manager
After a jazz career playing with the likes of Nelson Riddle, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and all the major studios, Bush turned to classical music and joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1962. After 20 years as associate principal trumpet, he served as the orchestra’s personnel manager until 1995.
Rochester Philharmonic Falls Just Short Of Its Three-Year Plan
After two fiscal years of surpluses, the orchestra posted a $161,000 deficit (on a $10 million operating budget) in FY 2008, the final year of the strategic plan. But the CEO doesn’t blame the country’s economic crisis: he says the main problem was staff turnover.
A Soviet-Style Orchestral Commune
Apply Marxist-Leninist principles to an orchestra, with the workers owning the means of production, and what do you get? This: “Formed in 1922, Persimfans – a Sovietized shorthand for Perviy Simfonichesky Ansambl, or First Symphony Ensemble – sought to embody the avant-garde spirit of the time.” The original group didn’t survive Stalin’s purges, but this week some musicians are trying out the idea again.
Dina Vierny, Maillol’s Muse, Dies At 89
She was “the model whose ample flesh and soft curves inspired the sculptor Aristide Maillol, rejuvenating his career, and who eventually founded a museum dedicated to his work.” In addition, during World War II, she ” ed refugees from Nazism across the Pyrenees into Spain as part of an American organization operating out of Marseille.”
Is Speed-The-Plow Better Off Without Jeremy Piven?
Ben Brantley observes that Piven’s departure allowed David Mamet “to come up with his funniest one-liner in years.” And yet, “now that I have seen two of Mr. Piven’s replacements in the central role of Bobby Gould, a film producer who catches a slight case of existential crisis, I am newly respectful of both Mr. Mamet’s accomplishment here and of the artistry of first-rate actors.”
The Best Of Updike, The Worst Of Updike
“To consider the 1,700-odd pages of his Harry Angstrom saga… is to find yourself considering a work with an excellent claim as the Great American Novel, but you’d be forgiven for preferring to spend time with four or five Very Good ones.”