Because some audience members have been using them to smuggle in vodka, that’s why. As ENO CEO Stuart Murphy tweeted to an annoyed patron, “We’ve had to do this to make sure you and other great opera fans have a really nice time. Sorry it’s a bit annoying but trust me — it would be far more annoying for you to have to witness the alternative.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
This May Be the Best Monument to Caesar Augustus
Reputedly, the last public words of Caesar Augustus were ‘Behold, I found Rome of clay, and leave her to you of marble.’ Augustus also left us a magnificent, exquisitely carved cameo whose double-narrative all but deifies him.
Memories are made of this
Even as he reaches the age at which names become harder and harder to recall, Terry finds that memories of long ago remain powerfully specific: pop songs of the 1950s, commercial jingles of the ’60s, candy from a vacation destination — and the surprisingly modernist mid-century design of Howard Johnson’s motel rooms.
The Artist and His Audience
The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler insisted that genuinely great music-making could not occur without a fully engaged audience. After watching Mets games at (D.C.) Nationals Stadium and Citi Field, Joe finds that the same seems to be true of baseball.
Monday Recommendation: Rob Bargad And Others
Reunion 7Tet (Rob Bargad and others), A Field Of You (Barnette)
Once a year, a band of musicians who go back a long way together gather for a two-night gig at a Manhattan jazz club. Last time around, they made a side trip to a recording studio.
San Francisco Theatres Fight In Court Over Who Gets To Stage ‘Harry Potter’ And ‘Evan Hansen’
“Nederlander of San Francisco, which operates that city’s Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters, this week asked a judge to prevent an ally-turned-rival, the producer Carole Shorenstein Hays, from staging the shows” — Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Dear Evan Hansen — “at the nearby Curran Theater, which she owns and has lavishly restored and ambitiously programmed.”
The New Literary Star From (Of All Places) Greenland
“Nordic noir, Scandinavia’s best-known cultural export, mixes violent crime and political intrigue. The climate is savage, the characters terse and there aren’t many laughs. Instead, you get snow, secrets, abuse, alcohol and some pretty ragged writing. Niviaq Korneliussen’s debut novel is completely different.”
When A Public Radio Pro Turns To Solo Podcasting (And Wonders If He’s Going Insane)
Public radio fans may remember Scott Carrier from his segments (many involving long road trips) on This American Life. In 2015, he switched to podcasting, reporting and producing the series The Home of the Brave with funding provided solely by listeners. Barrett Golding, who co-founded with Carrier the Peabody Award-winning NPR project Hearing Voices, talks with him about the transition to solo work and everything that it takes (and takes out of you).
In Which Bradley Cooper Makes A Journalist Question All The Premises Behind Celebrity Profiles
Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrestles in print with the actor’s famous reluctance to discuss his personal life (after having wrestled with Cooper himself over it during the interview) — and comes to understand (after several thousand words) that “he was just telling me that I’m asking the wrong questions.”
Why We Should Stop Trying To Justify The Arts (And Their Funding) With Measurable Data
“Underlying the development of quality metrics seems to be the question: ‘Are the arts justified?’ In other words, we are looking for evidence. This is the opening the quantifiers of the world need. Witness the attempts to find the value of the arts in their instrumental benefits to society, to the economy and to things like cognitive development. Not that these things can’t or shouldn’t be measured. It is just that they are not the reasons for art to exist. No child ever picked up a paintbrush to benefit the economy.”