At the Sydney launch of her latest film, the Baz Luhrmann epic Australia, she said, “In terms of my future as an actor, I don’t know. I’m in a place in my life where I’ve had some great opportunities but I may just choose to have some more children… There’s many things I want to do besides act.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Orlando Ballet’s Artistic Director Resigns Unexpectedly
“In an abrupt upheaval at the Orlando Ballet, artistic director Bruce Marks quit Saturday night and was replaced Monday morning by Robert Hill, a former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre.”
AD Of Cleveland’s Verb Ballets Departs Suddenly, Evidently Fired
“Hernando Cortez, the former member of noted New York dance companies who raised Cleveland’s Verb Ballets to national status, is stepping down immediately as Verb’s artistic director.” The company’s board president says Cortez is leaving “to follow other artistic interests,” but an internal e-mail suggests otherwise.
Young Tenor With Chicago Lyric Dies At 31
Ryan Smith, a first-year member of the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago and a 2007 winner of the Met’s National Council Auditions, died last week at age 31 of lymphoma.
L.A. Music Center Cancels Nederlands Dans Theater
The Music Center’s dance season has called off one of its six remaining programs this season: three June performances by Nederlands Dans Theater I. The decision was made “solely on the basis of our desire to manage our resources in the most prudent fashion.” The series has recently seen “reduced donor giving, a decline in investment revenue and a shortfall in ticket sales.”
Is Newfangled ‘Philanthrocapitalism’ Really Different From Good Old-Fashioned Philanthropy?
“Venture philanthropy” (“non-profit in nature, entrepreneurial in spirit” à la Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) – is it really revolutionary? One veteran argues that most such organizations have always been “extremely results-oriented… and the use of business principles has been in the foundation world for a long time.” Another contends that “some private sector principles… simply do not translate. Long-term ‘social transformation,’ for example, is neither easy to measure nor always cost-effective in profit-maximizing terms.” And what happens as the value of endowments plummets?
Newsflash: Opera In America Is Not Dying
From “High School Night” in San Francisco to the city-wide Ring festival in L.A. to the Met’s HD moviecasts to the fact that “Nearly every opera company in the country has a new work somewhere in its schedule” (per the chairman of Opera America), the art form is in good health, despite the financial crisis.
Ukraine Unlikely To Return Paintings Taken In War
“Ukraine is unlikely to return more than a dozen paintings by Western European artists brought here from a German museum as Soviet war trophies during World War II, an official said Thursday… Ukrainian law prohibits the return of World War II trophy art, she noted, adding that many Ukrainian paintings seized during the war have been exhibited in Germany but ‘nobody is returning them to us.'”
Patti LuPone’s Gypsy To Close March 1
“Patti LuPone is irreplaceable. So say the producers of Broadway’s Gypsy, who yesterday announced they would shutter the hit musical revival on March 1, 2009, rather than try to replace its bold, bossy and critically beloved leading lady.”
Must Be Better Than The Liverpool Oratorio
Peter Maxwell Davies has written a new piece dedicated to Paul McCartney: a 20-minute choral ode called Liber Pulsationis Fabulatoris. No, that’s not “the book of fabulous vibrations” – it’s a text by Hildegard von Bingen with the typically not-quite-sensical title “The Book of Pulsations of the Creator of Legends.” (By the way, PMax says that “Paul is as great as Schubert and still has not received the full recognition that his talent deserves.”)