Author: Matthew Westphal

Wait, Isn’t That Backwards? Ivo Van Hove’s Line In Screen-To-Stage Adaptations

The director of Amsterdam’s top theater company – known in New York for his daring stagings of A Streetcar Named Desire, Hedda Gabler and The Misanthrope – is making a specialty of producing great screenplays as live theater. Sure, we’ve seen it for years on Broadway with musicals (The Producers, Hairspray, The Lion King, Xanadu and so on and on and on), but van Hove stages such art-film classics as the Cassavetes scripts Faces and Opening Night, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, and Bergman’s Cries and Whispers.

The Real Problem Between The Arts And Audiences, Revealed

“But the underlying problem is one common to all the arts: fear. The arts are rank with it. Fear of being thought ignorant or being revealed as a fraud. Fear of not knowing how to pronounce chiaroscuro, trompe l’oeil or gesamtkunstwerk. Fear because the books we think we should have read bully us mercilessly and the music we think we ought to recognise tortures us on a rack of nagging self-doubt. Galleries and concert hall lobbies are filled with those darting eyes and premature nodding that masks the gentle, creeping terror of those seeking to signify recognition where none in fact exists.”

Wagner To Remain Off-Limits At Israeli Opera

“Richard Wagner and his works will remain a sensitive topic in Israel for many years, the Israeli Opera’s new musical director, conductor David Stern, told reporters yesterday. ‘I don’t think it’s such a great loss to Israeli audiences. I still conduct Wagner in other places around the world, but there are many other things that are worthwhile to conduct here.'”

Donatello’s David, Fresh From Its Laser Bath, Returns To Full Display

The 15th-century bronze statue, the most famous depiction of the biblical king after Michelangelo’s, is back on its perch at the Bargello Museum in Florence after an 18-month, €200,000 cleaning using lasers. (“We could only intervene now with the newest laser techniques; even the most delicate mechanical procedure would have hurt it.”)

The New Broom Sweeps Clean In Sydney

“Rafael Bonachela, the new artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company, has taken a knife to the company, shedding seven dancers [out of 17] and seeking to put two more on contracts lasting less than a year. The SDC also sacked four administrative staff and wants to move four full-time members of its production team onto casual contracts in response to the economic downturn… The changes cap off a horrendous period in the company’s history. In the past two years, the SDC has endured financial troubles, plummeting morale and the tragic death of Tanja Liedtke, its artistic director-designate.”

Rubik’s Cube Becomes Online Video Meme

Aging Gen-Xers may see the Cube as a blast from the 1980s past, but videos of various people solving the puzzle – from director Michel Gondrey appearing to work the Cube with his toes to YouTube’s “3-Year-Old Solves Rubik’s Cube in 114 Seconds” to a guy that does it while blindfolded – are popping up all over the Web. The short vidcasts are “part of a larger genre of popular online video: the ‘solving spectacle,’ which typically shows a soloist in a modestly appointed room trying to work out a problem – an intricate guitar solo, a speed painting – that is largely in his head.”

Barenboim Triumphs In Long-Awaited Met Debut

“[I]t was no surprise that he received a prolonged ovation when he first appeared in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night to conduct Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in his long-overdue debut with the company. The ovation was greater and richly deserved five hours later, when Mr. Barenboim took his solo bow onstage. Though his performance of this challenging masterpiece was rhapsodic and impassioned, it was also keenly sensitive to the score’s harmonic shifts and architectonic structure. The Met orchestra played splendidly for him, and somehow he altered its sheen and color, making it sound duskier and warmer.”