“The Academy Awards show is consistently the largest entertainment-driven live broadcast in the world, and it takes roughly 1,000 people to make it happen. At this year’s production meeting, there were more than 200 in the room, representing the disparate areas of expertise the show requires, from the medical staff to the stage manager, from the set designer to the telephone technician, the limousine coordinator to the director.”
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Zambello Trades Opera For Musical Theatre
Francesca Zambello is one of the top opera directors. But Zambello has decided the time is right to move from opera to musicals. “I’ve worked on a lot of world premieres in operas and found that it’s gratifying but frustrating because it doesn’t get done a lot. So I’ve started to shift quite recently into the musicals market, working with composers and lyricists. And ultimately I do want to work in my language.”
Springer Into The Future
Jerry Springer, The Opera, has had a rough ride on its UK tour. There have been protests, and ticket sales are slow. “So what does the future hold for Jerry Springer: The Opera? Producer Jon Thoday hopes to stage it in Australia, and has not given up on the idea of a Broadway production, although the controversy around the show has previously made it difficult to attract sufficient funding in America, where the Christian lobby is so powerful.”
UK Heritage Battered By Climate Change
The UK’s historical buildings are being damaged by climate change. “Every decision we now make that hasn’t factored in climate change is a potential mistake that could cost us time and money to put right later on. This isn’t just to do with protecting an 18th-century house,” he adds. “It’s us saying: this is what our experience is telling us about the whole environment.”
Historian Irving Sentenced For Denying Holocaust
British historian David Irving has been sentenced to three years in jail for his statements denying the Holocaust. “Austria has Europe’s toughest law criminalising denial of the Holocaust. Irving went on trial for two speeches he delivered in the country almost 17 years ago. He was arrested in November last year after returning to Austria to deliver more speeches despite an arrest warrant against him and being barred from the country.”
Wanted: Detroit’s New Music Director
The Detroit Symphony is looking for a new music director. What kind of person should that be? “Every music director brings his own agenda, his own interests. They are all conductors first. Thirty years ago, that was enough. Now we expect them to be ambassadors as well, and in many different ways, raising money, speaking before concerts, meeting the public after performances. We have to realize that a conductor is a human being with his own strengths and weaknesses.”
English National Opera Gets Some Private Help
Lord Laidlaw, one of Scotland’s richest men, is helping to bail out English National opera, with a £2 million donation. Laidlaw, “who has almost single-handedly kept the Scottish Conservatives afloat since 1997, is to help to finance a number of productions over at least two seasons at the Coliseum in London’s West End. His intervention will be a huge relief to the opera company, which has been beset by a wave of financial and managerial problems.”
Germany Returns Parthenon Fragment To Greece
Last month, a German University returned a piece of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. “On the front, it is simply cut, with the outline of part of a male foot, and on the back is a modern incised inscription, in Greek, with the word “Parthenon”. It was not until 1948 that archaeologist German Hafner recognised that it was the heel of figure number 28 in block viii of the north frieze.”
Italy Accepts Met’s Offer To Return Art
Italy has accepted the Metropolitan Museum’s offer to return 20 artifacts. “The agreement reached in Rome between Italian officials and the director of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest art museum, Philippe de Montebello, may pave the way for other such accords between U.S. museums and countries with rich archaeological resources.”
Inside The Met’s Italian Decision
The Metropolitan Museum’s decision to return artifacts to Italy was Not a decision arrived at recently. “Documents in the case show that much of that evidence had circulated for years — and that while the Met until recently cast skepticism on the Italian claims, it had concluded as early as 2003 that the silver should be returned.”