This series of unstaged performances of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust was an accident – they were meant to be seven fully-staged performances. But what a happy accident, and what the Met could learn from the experience: “Rameau, Lully, Vivaldi: The glory of early music could finally ring at the Met without the pressure and expense of full stagings. Ditto Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise, a late-20th-century classic still unheard in this city.” – The New York Times
Author: ArtsJournal2
A Grammy Sweep For 18-Year-Old Billie Eilish (And Here Are The Rest Of The Winners Too)
Eilish, whose 22-year-old brother produced her album (and who won Producer of the Year), won Best Song, Best Record, Best Album, and Best Artist. Dudamel and the LA Phil won a Grammy; Jennifer Higdon won a Grammy; Joyce DiDonato won a Grammy … the entire list is at the link. – Los Angeles Times
Amazon Has Now Restricted Reviews Of ‘American Dirt’ To Those Who Buy The Book On Amazon
This move has “raised a business question about what kind of platform Amazon wants to be.” In part, it’s problematic because Amazon bought the big review site Goodreads in 2013. One writer and publisher says, “If they want to keep the discussion about race and appropriation out of their website, that’s certainly their right. … But because they have invited this social function into their retail business, it feels a little like dirty pool to a lot of us in the industry.” – Marketplace
Salma Hayek Apologizes For Praising ‘American Dirt’
As controversy continues to swirl (for instance, as HuffPost recounts the ways American Dirt takes passages from Latinx writers’ nonfiction books on immigration) and as the book itself climbs the bestseller charts, Selma Hayek apologizes for praising the book without having read it – thus, perhaps, exposing the celebrity book endorsement for what it truly is: A PR racket. – The Washington Post
Are The Grammys Irrelevant?
Last night, the night before the 62nd Grammys, Sean “Diddy” Coombs called out the awards for their lack of diversity – and a decades-long refusal to recognize rap and hip hop. The NYT had already weighed in, agreeing: “Broadly speaking, nonwhite artists, female artists, and artists who come from the worlds of hip-hop and R&B are consistently marginalized, honored in genre categories but shut out in the four major categories (album, song and record of the year, and best new artist). Add it all up, and you get impending irrelevance.” – The New York Times
Have 21st Century Writers Fallen Out Of Love With Marriage?
Perhaps writers are out of love with romantic love, not only marriage. “If the romance fantasy was long doled out to women as a compensation for powerlessness elsewhere, contemporary writers are increasingly turning the marriage plot on its head.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Paris Opera Opens Again (Perhaps Briefly) After Weeks Of Strikes
Public sector workers, dancers, and musicians have been on strike since December, with cancellations costing the Paris Opera nearly 15 million euros. But Saturday night, the production of Tales of Hoffman went up. “‘To preserve the economic integrity of the Opera, we have made the decision to go ahead with the performance this evening, but we remain mobilised for the withdrawal of this bill,’ said a union representative at the start of the performance, in a statement recorded by a spectator and posted on Twitter.” – France24
Netflix Is Betting On First-Time Filmmakers In The Streaming Wars
That may sound weird when Netflix also has Scorsese and Noah Baumbach out with Oscar-nominated movies at the moment (not to mention last year’s Roma), but: “The idea is to forge relationships with up-and-coming directors before they become big names. Last year, Netflix released 19 original movies from first-time directors on its streaming platform; another 11 have already been announced for 2020. About half of the first-time directors last year were women, and several titles hailed from directors of color whose films had diverse casts and characters.” – Los Angeles Times
When Fast Food Picks Up Larger Society’s Civil Rights Slack
You’ve probably heard of Harry Belafonte’s connection to the Civil Rights Movement, but … McDonald’s? Yes. The history of McDonald’s includes a large number of Black-owned franchises that also employ a lot of young (and not so young) Black women. But of course, there are issues: “Any time we have communities that have to rely on a business to be the place of refuge, to be the place for wifi, to be the sponsor of youth sports, to be the place where the youth job program happens, for the college scholarships to emanate from, then we have a problem.” – NPR
The Game-Changing Documentary ‘Honeyland’
Not to be confused with the autobiographical Shia LaBoeuf feature Honey Boy, of course. But seriously: The film, a documentary about a woman in North Macedonia living in isolation with her dying mother and keeping bees – and what happens when a Turkish family moves in next door – is the first film nominated both for best documentary and best international feature. A.O. Scott chose it as the best movie of 2019. – The New York Times