The weekly broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, under threat ever since ChevronTexaco quit as principal sponsor in 2003, have found a new benefactor in an unlikely place. Toll Brothers, a home building company based in suburban Philadelphia, has agreed to sponsor the broadcasts for the next four seasons. The broadcasts cost $6 million per year, and the Met says that Toll Brothers has agreed to pay a “major” portion of that cost. The company, which specializes in high-end luxury housing (its average home sells for $600,000 or more) is hoping that the association with the Met will add an element of class to its image in the eyes of prospective clients.
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MoMA Scores A ‘Lost’ Matisse
New York’s Museum of Modern Art has a new Matisse in its collection. The Plum Blossoms, from the artist’s last series of paintings, was purchased for MoMA by its new president and her husband for an amount estimated to be $25 million. The painting’s whereabouts had been unknown for more than 30 years until a Manhattan dealer approached MoMA on behalf of the anonymous collector who owned it. It was last put on public display in 1970, and because it has always been in private collections, it is reportedly in extraordinary condition. MoMA hopes to have the painting on its walls within a week.
BBC’s Leap of Faith
In what is believed to be a groundbreaking move for a major national broadcaster, the BBC has released more than 100 clips from its television archive to the public, for use by anyone who wants to download, remix, or sample them. The “rip, mix, and share” idea was launched in conjunction with a BBC Radio 1 contest encouraging listeners to design their own music video, but the implications for broadcasters as a whole are far greater than a simple video challenge. Where most content providers make a point of zealously protecting their copyrighted content and even taking legal action against anyone “sampling” from such work, the BBC has made a conscious decision to encourage the public sharing of its archival material.
Wichita Holds A Place For LPO Musicians
Kansas’s Wichita Symphony and Wichita Grand Opera are offering to hire one member of the New Orleans-based Louisiana Philharmonic for each performance scheduled in 2005-06, with no audition required. The chair could be filled by the same musician for the entire season, or by a rotating series of players. The musicians’ union has put out a call for orchestras across the country to offer work to the New Orleans musicians.
Study: UK Musicians Overworked, Underpaid
According to a new study commissioned by the UK’s musicians’ union, 90% of professional orchestra players in Britain have to find extra work outside their orchestra to supplement their income. The union claims that the study proves that UK musicians are underpaid compared with their counterparts in America and on the European continent. “Most rank and file musicians earned between £22,000 and £24,000 despite having been in the profession for an average of 21 years, with salaries failing to keep pace with inflation.”
The Evolution of the Hollywood Villain
It’s almost never difficult to spot the bad guy in a Hollywood film – he’s immediately recognizable by whatever characteristics Americans have currently devised to indicate people who are not to be trusted. In the 1940s and ’50s, it was German accents and jackboots, and the Nazi archetype served the movie business well for decades, even when the villain in question wasn’t actually German. Now, with 9/11 fresh (but not too fresh) in the American mind, Hollywood villains are taking a decided turn for the Arabian. Even so, “the most popular enemies of the 21st century are still the ones without nation, religion or creed who aren’t going to offend anyone.” Another alien invasion flick, anyone?
Even Better The Second Time Around
We’ve all heard stories of those strange, obsessive types who attend the same play hundreds of times. This may not be normal behavior, but Rupert Christiansen says that there is great pleasure and intellectual growth to be derived from viewing the same work of theatre, art, or music more than once. “The point about the return visit is not the infantile pleasure of repetition, but the possibility of surprise. A good work of art never stays quite the same: it ambushes you, outwits you. A first exposure can provide the primitive excitement of wanting to know what happens next, a second provides the opportunity to register details, a third brings a sense of the underpinning joints and girders that make up the structure. And so it goes on.”
Nobel’s Play Is No Prizewinner
A Stockholm theatre is preparing to raise the curtain on a long-forgotten play by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The patron of the Nobel Institute and its world-renowned prizes, Nobel was also an amateur poet, and penned his only dramatic work, Nemesis, in 1896, shortly before his death. Everyone involved in the production seems to agree that it is far from a good play (it mainly deals with torture, rape, incest, and Satan, and was condemned as blasphemous by the Swedish clergy shortly after its publication,) but the staging is being presented as a historical curiosity showing a different side of a revered figure in Sweden’s history.
New Mike Leigh Play Delayed In London
“Tonight should see the unveiling of perhaps the most breathlessly awaited – and mysterious – theatrical event of the year. But, it turns out, audiences are going to have to wait another two nights to see the new play by Mike Leigh at [London’s] National Theatre – because the dramatist and film-maker has yet to finish it.” The show’s initial run has been sold out for weeks, even though virtually nothing is known about the plot. (Even the title was only unveiled late last week.) “The play will be Leigh’s first since 1993, and his first creative outing since the success of the film Vera Drake, which won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice film festival. His best-loved drama is 1977’s Abigail’s Party.”
Not Everything In Venice Sucks
The Venice Film Festival may have traded some of its credibility for the allure of Hollywood glitz, but one critic says that there are still great films to be found, if you can force your way through the bantering celebrities and “execrable” Calista Flockhart flicks. “There have been some good, even great films in the festival’s first few days. Two are outstanding. And one, although it is in the competition, is nothing short of a blockbuster, complete with big stars and Oscar-worthy everything being trumpeted from massive posters along the Venice Lido’s main drag.”