“Product placement and endorsement deals have long been staples in television shows, movies and radio programs and even, more recently, on video games. But they have been rare on Broadway. Now, advertisers, casting about for new ways to attract increasingly distracted consumers, have turned their attention to the theater world. And producers, always looking for extra cash to offset rising costs, are receptive.”
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Candidate Pulls Out Of Getty Director Search
The leading candidate to replace Deborah Gribbon as director of the Getty Museum has said he doesn’t want the job. William Griswold has been the museum’s acting director. “The news has been the talk of the Los Angeles art world, as well as among Getty staff members, who would not speak for attribution. Mr. Griswold also declined to comment.”
Tour This
“Touring a work internationally can transform the artists, allow the work to evolve, build a profile, develop a larger audience, validate companies in the eyes of their home audience, recoup their investment, or just keep everyone employed.” But “touring can also be a killer, psychologically and financially.”
Hollywood Goes To Africa
Has Hollywood discovered Africa? “Africa is almost as much of a ‘dark continent’ for moviegoers today as in the past. There’s a grim irony in this, at a time when headlines about western Sudan are crying out to the world for attention, just as events in Somalia did a dozen years ago. It takes catastrophe of huge proportions to focus American minds on African issues.”
New York’s Sad Dance Season
Robert Gottlieb looks back at a season of dance that didn’t add up to much. “Large talent, of course, can’t be legislated into existence, and it’s not the fault of the Rhodens and O’Days and Kudelkas and Greenbergs that they don’t have it. But let’s not be deceived by the culture’s machinery of publicity and self-promotion or by our ardent longing for the real thing. That we have so few first-rate choreographers today is a sad fact; better to accept it than to lie to ourselves.”
Will Digitization Make Libraries Rethink What They Do?
So Google is going to digitize vast stores of the world’s books. “Most librarians and archivists are ecstatic about the announcement, saying it will likely be remembered as the moment in history when society finally got serious about making knowledge ubiquitous. But some of the same people believe Google’s efforts and others like it will force libraries and librarians to reëxamine their core principles—including their commitment to spreading knowledge freely. Letting a for-profit organization like Google mediate access to library books, after all, could either open up long-hidden reserves of human wisdom or constitute the first step toward the privatization of the world’s literary heritage.”
Just Where Does Sex Belong In Classical Music?
“You could say that classical music has sex on the brain, which, as D H Lawrence said, is a very bad place to have it. Bad or not, it makes for something jarringly out of tune with current notions of sexiness. How on earth can you combine the sublimated, secret yearnings of Brahms’s chamber music with the up-front sexiness of, say, Bond? The short answer is, you can’t. They belong to different worlds. It would be like adding lip gloss to the Mona Lisa.”
ENO’s Mixed Bag
Paul Daniel is leaving as music director of the English National Opera. “It has been eight years of musical and theatrical striving, and the results have ranged from epoch-making highs to disappointing lows. He bows out of ENO conducting the final opera of Wagner’s Ring, a gesture that should be climactically valedictory, but instead seems oddly flat, having been, on the whole, a critical flop.”
Oprah To Publish Books
Oprah has decided to launch a series of hardback books spun off from stories from her magazine. “The deal with Oxmoor reflects continued audience growth for Ms. Winfrey and her feel-good message directed mainly at women. Ratings for her daily talk show are the highest they’ve been in years. The May issue of the magazine, which will mark the its fifth anniversary, will be packed with 200-plus pages of ads–a record for the title.”
Turning Around The Met
The Metropolitan Opera has been struggling. “As the 2004-5 season enters the homestretch, the Met’s box office has been running at roughly 10 per cent lower than it did before 9/11, when more than 90 percent of the hall’s 3,800 seats were regularly filled. Although nothing short of Armageddon would keep local opera fans away, many out-of-towners for whom a visit to New York used to be unthinkable without a pilgrimage to Broadway and 65th Street have apparently found that they can lead a perfectly happy life by spending the same amount of money on, say, a beach in the Caribbean. Even at a time when the dollar is down, going to the Met remains an expensive habit; once broken, it’s easily kicked.” But there’s reason for hope…