The Canadian Opera Company has had a great year, and now it has the numbers to prove it. “The company’s most ambitious year ever ended with a 32-per-cent increase in its endowment fund and a small operating surplus of $49,000… Ticket sales, donations and corporate sponsorships were all sharply higher than during the previous year and all shows were virtually sold out.”
Author: sbergman
Vancouver Gallery Eyeing New Digs
“The Vancouver Art Gallery is preparing to pursue a move from its current building to a former bus-depot site a few blocks away… The VAG has long outgrown its current home on Robson Street, a former provincial courthouse that was built in 1906 and reconfigured in the early 1980s.”
Could CBC, CTV Benefit From US Strike?
One of the major challenges of running a Canadian TV network is getting your potential viewers, the vast majority of whom live within a short drive of the US border, to even watch your channel when they get all the big-budget US networks for free. But the writers’ strike is offering northern networks a rare opportunity to recapture lost viewership.
Monday Critical For Writers
The talks scheduled for next Monday between striking writers and Hollywood studios will likely mean the difference between a quick settlement and a months-long siege. “A protracted war, much like the sides fought during a five-month strike in 1988, would pose a particular threat for writers.”
Stagehands’ Union Has $5m War Chest
“The tiny union that has shut down Broadway was really ready to rumble. Local One of the stagehands union quietly amassed a $5 million strike fund and is well-prepared for a long, drawn-out battle with theater owners and producers.”
Piracy Takes To The Stream
Continuing efforts to halt video piracy are finding themselves stymied by the advance of new technology. As the industry continues to crack down on file sharing, streaming video has stepped in as the new go-to technology of pirates and those who prefer not to pay for their movies.
Modernism’s Inward-Looking Drive
A new book traces the artistic and intellectual history of modernism, and concludes that the movement “was propelled by two main impulses: the urge to overturn established hierarchies and break rules… and a compulsion to explore the artist’s interior world.”
Major DVD Lab Raided In Kuala Lumpur
“Malaysia has raided a laboratory capable of churning out $52 million worth of pirated DVDs a year in the nation’s biggest such raid this year… High on a U.S. piracy watchlist, Malaysia has sharply stepped up the battle against copyright pirates since it began negotiating a free-trade pact with the United States.”
The Outsider
Orhan Pamuk might be Turkey’s most celebrated writer, with a Nobel Prize and multiple bestselling books to his credit. But despite his fame, he’s never felt welcomed on the international literary scene, just as Turkey feels shoved to the outside of Europe, and alienation is a theme to which he has returned often.
Philly’s Podium Possibilities
As the Philadelphia Orchestra ramps up its search for a new music director, Peter Dobrin speculates on who might be a candidate. Osmo Vänskä? Could be. Stephane Deneve? Why not? But almost more important than the candidates is the process, and what the orchestra decides are the important criteria to focus on.