Author: Matthew Westphal

A First Report On The Acoustics Of Philadelphia’s Newest Concert Hall

Peter Dobrin on the 270-seat hall in the Rhoden Arts Center at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: “New halls take a while to settle in, and this one, which employs an extensive sound system of speakers both on stage and overhead, seems more complicated than most. On first hearing, though, it sounded awfully dry.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Producers Of Broadway ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ And Publishers Of Older Play Version Could Be Headed To Court

Scott Rudin, lead producer of the Aaron Sorkin adaptation now on Broadway and likely to tour eventually, has been trying to block stagings of the older version, written half a century ago by Christopher Sergel Sr. and still published by his family firm. (One tour of regional Britain was recently cancelled after Rudin threatened to sue.) Christopher Sergel III says this is doing real damage to his business. – Crain’s Chicago Business

France Drops One Rape Charge Against Director Luc Besson But Starts Another

“Prosecutors dropped the rape investigation into allegations by the actor Sand Van Roy who told police in May that she had been repeatedly raped by Besson, 59, during an on-off relationship. … But the Paris prosecutor’s office said a new preliminary investigation was launched on 21 February after a different, unnamed woman reported an allegation of sexual assault.” – The Guardian (AFP)

Soprano Hilde Zadek, Postwar Star Of Vienna State Opera, Dead At 101

“Throughout her career, Ms. Zadek was praised by critics for her dark-hued voice, dramatic intensity and fine musicality. Before retiring from the stage in 1971, she also sang at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden and other major houses. But her primary work was in Vienna. There, in the city she feared would revile her [as a Jew], she sang more than 700 performances in dozens of roles; taught for years at the Vienna Music Academy; [and] presided over the International Hilde Zadek Voice Competition, a prestigious contest for young singers.” – The New York Times

Micro-Serialized Novels Are Big In The Far East – Can They Catch On In The States?

“In China and Korea, millions of fans make micropayments to writers for incremental updates in their serialized stories.” Now a Korean entrepreneur has launched Radish, which offers a similar service to the American market: writers for TV soap operas develop serialized stories, mostly romance and horror, that get regularly updated in installments that take ten minutes to read on a smartphone. – Publishing Perspectives

This Museum Handles One Of The World’s Touchiest Subjects

“How do you memorialize a holocaust that even now, seven decades after it took place, may still not be entirely safe to talk about?” India’s Partition Museum, which opened in 2017 in Amritsar, in Punjab state and hard by the border with Pakistan, uses documents, photographs, and eyewitness testimony — carefully — to do the very tricky job. – The New York Times

Robert Rauschenberg Once Threw His Paintings Into A River Because A Critic Said So

The artist’s 1953 exhibition in Florence wasn’t well-received by the conservative public of the city: one critic was appalled at the art’s “barbaric metaphysics” and another called it “psychological garbage and that it must be thrown into the Arno.” So, when the show was over and Rauschenberg saw how much it would cost to ship the art home to the States, that is what he did. – The Daily Beast