The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is hosting its first International Chamber Orchestra Festival, with the SPCO giving joint concerts with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
Author: Matthew Westphal
New Ballet Company Debuts In Utah
The Salt Lake City Ballet Company, “which is the performance branch of the Salt Lake City Ballet Conservatory, features dancers ages 14-20.” Artistic director Cristobal Marquez says that “We decided to make the company a ‘pre-professional’ company that would give the dancers a taste of what a real company is like.”
L.A. Opera To Go Ahead With Next Season’s Complete Ring
“But with Wagner draining the budget in an uncertain economic climate, L.A. Opera has an otherwise reduced season of two beloved Italian comedies and two rarities.” There’s luxury casting, though, including a Flórez-DiDonato-Gunn Barber of Seville.
Outgoing Philadelphia Orchestra President Departs Early
Last September, James Undercofler announced that he’d be stepping down at the end of this season. Instead, he left abrupt this week. The new interim CEO, a retired financial executive, will have to deal with the current economic tumult, searches for a permanent chief executive and a new music director, and what one board member reportedly describes as a “chaotic” atmosphere in the administrative offices.
Futuristic Architect Jan Kaplický, 71
“The 71-year-old designer behind the spacecraft-like media centre at Lord’s cricket ground in London and the curvaceous, sequin-clad Selfridges in Birmingham collapsed in Prague last night. The Czech-born architect’s octopus-shaped design for a new national library in Prague had won an international competition but failed to gain acceptance among Czech politicians… [and he] had been fighting hard to win support for what he hoped would be the ‘grand finale’ to his career.”
Could ‘American Exceptionalism’ Become Respectable Again?
“[T]he topic has been notably out of fashion in the scholarly world. Now, from the well-known historian Simon Schama, we have a new, contrarian view that looks at what’s unique in the American character, putting our past in the context of the election of the new president we are just inaugurating.”
Patrick McGoohan, 80, Creator And Star Of The Prisoner
“One of the leading stars of British television of the 1950s and 1960s, he is best known for played The Prisoner‘s title character Number Six in the surreal 1960s show… He also won two Emmy Awards – 16 years apart – for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama Columbo.”
A Different Sort Of Gutenberg Project
“Google isn’t the only organization taking steps to make important works of literature available online. The Morgan Library & Museum in New York has invited technicians and scholars to create a digital facsimile of one of its Gutenberg Bibles, the library has announced.”
Dealer Arrested Over Alleged Smuggling Of Egyptian Artifacts
“A wanted Lebanese antiquities dealer has been arrested in Bulgaria over accusations he stole ancient Egyptian artifacts and slipped them out of the country in recent years, Egypt’s Culture Ministry said on Thursday.”
Welsh National Opera Scores Two Major Role Debuts
Critics will be flocking to Cardiff next season to hear two of the world’s top baritones trying out touchstones of the repertoire: Local hero Bryn Terfel will sing his first Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Meistersinger, and Simon Keenlyside will take on Verdi’s Rigoletto.