The former tenor founded San Antonio Pocket Opera in 1995, and over 16 years he developed the company into what is now San Antonio Opera, presenting full main-stage works. He left that company in 2011 as it began what became a financial crisis, and the following year he founded a chamber opera company now known as Alamo City Opera. – San Antonio Express-News
Author: Matthew Westphal
Who’ll Play The Polonium? New Opera Coming About Death Of Alexander Litvinenko
The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko, a work about the poisoning of the former FSB agent and dissident Russian émigré in London in 2008, with music by Anthony Bolton and text by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, will premiere in summer 2020 at England’s Grange Park Opera. – The Times (UK)
The Guardian Posts First Operating Profit In 20 Years
In 2015-16, just as new leaders were taking charge, the newspaper/website lost £57 million; three years later, operations are £8000,000 in the black — even as management has resisted instituting an online paywall. – BBC
Venice Is Trying New Ways To Manage The Tourist Tsunami
“A new generation of concerned citizens and entrepreneurs is taking … combining grassroots activism with socially sensitive, sustainable initiatives to save their island home” — from managing the trash and reducing use of plastic to creating a new, more locally oriented alternative to Airbnb. – The Guardian
Protesters Have Banana Eat-In At Poland’s National Museum After Culture Ministry Pulls Video Of Woman Eating Banana
“The 1973 video Consumer Art, by prominent artist Natalia LL, showing a young woman eating a banana with great pleasure, was removed from the National Museum in Warsaw last week after the new museum head, Jerzy Miziolek, was summoned to the Ministry of Culture.” And once word got around, scornful protesters did what we’d expect them to do. – Yahoo! (AP)
Head Of Met Opera’s National Council Auditions Talks About How Jurors Choose The Winners
New York Times classical critic Anthony Tommasini found he didn’t entirely agree with the choice of winners at this year’s finals. So he called National Council Auditions executive director executive director about what the jury looks and listens for. – The New York Times
Mark Nerenhausen on Curating Outcomes
For a second video interview for my Presenting the Performing Arts class, I talked with Mark Nerenhausen, President/CEO of Hennepin Theatre Trust in Minneapolis, who shared the many moving parts in animating and activating a building and a neighborhood through the live performing arts. – Andrew Taylor
Why “Porgy and Bess” Is More than a “Period Piece”
Is the fundamental topic of Porgy and Bess a black Carolina subculture ca. 1920? If so, does that validate the Gershwin Estate’s insistence that only blacks sing it? – Joe Horowitz
Look alive
As I grow older, I find that my personal definition of what it means to be beautiful is becoming far more encompassing. What no longer catches my eye, however, is youthful prettiness. It is wasted on me, whether in its natural form or in the chemically assisted simulacra that are easy enough to spot. – Terry Teachout
James Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’ Is A Virtuosic Treatment Of Shame
“Baldwin has captured his own early lifetime of shame and filtered it through the alembic of [narrator] David’s own cave-journey. It is a solid shame, thick, heavy, cold, enveloping like a darkening star.” – Literary Hub