Mozart’s 250th birthday is being celebrated worldwide, but predictably, no city is going quite as far as Mozart’s adopted hometown of Vienna. Born in Salzburg, the composer spent the bulk of his adult life in Austria’s capital city, and beginning later this month, there will be literally thousands of events dedicated to celebrating his legacy. Vienna has appointed an artistic director to coordinate events across the city, and some 80 new works have been commissioned in tribute to the master. More than 600 public concerts will be held in an effort to popularize the celebration, and the famous Albertina museum will unveil an exhaustive Mozart exhibit in March.
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Mozart’s Screenwriter
Mozart’s operas are among the most celebrated in the repertoire. But as spectacular as the music they contain may be, half the secret to the success of works like The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni may be the engaging characters and artfully woven storylines created by Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. “A poet, priest and womaniser, who ended his days as a grocer, he also wrote the words to some of the greatest operas.”
Missouri Cancels Arts Funding
“The Missouri Arts Council has canceled a program worth millions of dollars once promised to local arts groups. In the fiscal year beginning July 1, the Kansas City Symphony, the Kansas City Ballet, the Lyric Opera, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and 21 other arts organizations across Missouri will no longer receive annual payments from the council that would have reached tens of millions of dollars over time. The arts council gave no notice to any of the affected arts groups in October when it voted to end contracts with organizations participating in the Capital Incentive Program. The program allowed them to collect interest from the council’s endowment. Now, because of budget cuts and erratic state funding of the arts council, there is too little money to pay them.”
SPAC, On The Road To Recovery, Discovers It’s A Long Trek
Upstate New York’s Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) has had a productive year, and if reports from within are to be believed, the organization is well on its way to healing the divisive splits that left it on the edge of insolvency a year ago. But time doesn’t stand still for rebuilding purposes, and SPAC is facing a daunting array of challenges in the year ahead, from expanding its audience base to expanding its board. A major marketing push is on tap, and audience services such as online ticketing are a priority as well. Still, SPAC needs millions of dollars to stabilize its depleted endowment, and is still trying to worm money out of the New York State Assembly for physical improvements.
NY Pols: Turnbull Must Quit Harlem Boys Choir
New York Congressman Charles Rangel and former NYC Mayor David Dinkins have stepped into the middle of the dustup over the future of the Harlem Boys Choir, telling founder Walter Turnbull that it is time for him to step aside and turn the organization over to someone with better management skills. “Haunted by a sex scandal, the choir is battling eviction from its rent-free space in a city school as well as accusations of shoddy bookkeeping and financial ruin so severe it owes roughly $3 million in unpaid taxes. At least 59 liens and judgments have been filed against the choir by federal, state and local governments since 1988.” Rangel and Dinkins are attempting to raise $500,000 to forestall the eviction, but are making it clear that Turnbull’s ouster will be a condition of their continued assistance.
Two Countries Separated By A Common Musical?
There was a time when, if a musical was a smash hit on London’s West End, it was soon to be a similar hit on Broadway, and no one bothered asking whether the action and staging would “translate” well to an American audience. But increasingly, the biggest hits in London are falling flat in America’s leading theatre cities. Part of the problem is simply the London audience’s affection for a specific style of theatre from which American audiences long ago moved on. But the larger issue may be the incredible specificity of recent London productions: shows which require an offhand knowledge of recent UK political and social history are likely to meet with blank stares across the pond.
Barenboim The Crusader
Say this for Daniel Barenboim: he’s never boring. The celebrated conductor/pianist may not have the youthful sheen that once added to his stardom, but his controversial involvement in Mideast politics and his outspoken opposition to America’s near-constant use of music as background noise make him one of the era’s best interviews. These days, Barenboim is on a lecture tour of three continents, and he is taking seemingly everyone to task: Americans for their short attention spans, Germans for being unwilling to accept the unpleasantness of their own history, Britons for allowing music education to decline precipitously, and Israelis for their seeming inability to differentiate between power and strength.
Cultivating The Nightclub Set
Fresh off the high of the inevitable crowds that greet a newly expanded and renovated museum, Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center has launched a new initiative designed to draw in a more diverse crowd than would normally spend its free time at a modern art museum. “To put it plainly, the Walker doesn’t feel like any other museum. It feels, for lack of a better word, alive. Every Thursday, [when the museum scraps its admission charge and stays open late,] the Walker’s contorted, dreamlike corridors bustle with activity. People are on dates; some are even dressed up, though not in the suit-and-tie sense. It’s more like they’re going to a nightclub — you’re likely to see miniskirts, fur boots, and overpriced vintage T-shirts. But remember, you’re supposed to be looking at the art.”
Washington Ballet Rejects Mediation Offer
The current contract negotiations between Washington Ballet and its dancers could best be described as an extended meltdown, with both sides dug in and spouting vitriol at their opponent through the press. So it should have been a positive development last week when Michael Kaiser, president of Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, offered to mediate the talks. Kaiser is widely respected in the arts world by both managers and performers, and he has stepped into the middle of more than one labor dispute with good results. But Washington Ballet’s management team wants nothing to do with mediation, saying that “we’re just not there yet.” A representative of the dancers, who have been out of work since mid-December, called the ballet’s rejection of Kaiser “asinine.”
Quick Lit, Direct To The Consumer
Every type of entertainment seems to be available on-demand these days, so why not literature? (Yes, yes, we know, books are technically an on-demand content delivery device, but just humor us.) One well-known Canadian author has launched an online subscription service for his work, e-mailing three stories per month directly to readers in exchange for an $8 annual fee. “The benefits to the author are obvious. In addition to the enforced deadlines and the built-in revenue stream (he makes about $275 a month, in addition to direct-marketed book sales and speaking engagements related to his subscription list), Rogers has found a way to overcome one of the most vexing problems faced by writers: launching their words into a void.”