Five years after London’s Royal Opera House reopened after an expensive makeover, it’s a very different institution, writes Norman Lebrecht. And that’s a very good thing…
Blog
Levine In Boston – Thrilled To Be Here
By all accounts, James Levine is thrilled to be working at his new job in Boston, writes Alex Ross. “Levine is preëminent among American conductors, yet he remains a curiously contested figure.”
FCC Rejects Pay-Only-For-What-You-Use Plan For Cable TV
“Federal regulators rejected on Friday the idea that allowing cable TV subscribers to pay only for channels they want would lower high cable bills. Consumer groups said the analysis was flawed.”
Is The Recording Industry Business Stabilizing?
Recording company EMI says that the decline in the music recording business has been halted. “The world’s third-largest music company said the global music market declined 1.3% over the six months to the end of September, compared with a 10% drop in the same period last year. EMI said a return to growth in the US, Japan and south-east Asia offset a flat performance in Britain and a continued decline in Germany.”
Cost may Kill Berlin’s Museum Island Restoration
An ambitious plan to renovate Berlin’s remarkable Museum Island is in danger. “A federal accounting office spokesman said the €130m (£93m) plan was too expensive. ‘We have nothing against the architecture. It’s simply a question of finance’.”
Stonehenge Under Attack (For 150 Years)
Debate is roaring over a plan to redo the Stonehenge site to accomodate tourists. But photographs over the past 150 years show that successive generations have meddled with the site trying to make it more “user friendly.”
Iraqi Art’s Coming Out
Artists worked in Iraq during the Saddam years, but the art being made in Iraq now is different. “Artists are emerging from the atrophied, censorious Saddam years, from the distortions of taste provoked by state patronage and control and the horizons foreshortened by sanctions, and are beginning to document what is around them.”
NBA – Payback For Stephen King?
The National Book Awards went off last week. “The honors have been around since 1950 and were sponsored in part by publishers who still buy most of the $1,000-a-plate dinners at the ceremony. They were all smiles last year when rainmaker Stephen King accepted the foundation’s honorary medal for distinguished contributions to American letters. They were frowning this year when the fiction finalists were announced. Only one of them had written a book that sold more than 2,000 copies. Was this payback from the literary community for King’s recognition?”
Could Computers Replace Writers?
“Occasionally you hear of a Luddite novelist who shuns computers, but the truth is that most of us would be lost without them. If I rail and curse at mine, it is partly out of resentment at our miserable co-dependence. Imagine, then, the blow to my scribbler’s vanity when I discovered a while back that computers might get along just fine without writers.”
MoMA: A Building That Disappears (That’s Good)
AJ blogger John Perrault is impressed with the new Museum of Modern Art. “I was surprised that the complex is as successful as it is. It’s all a 3-D grid, fittingly so, given the midtown street grid. If the truth be known, neither façade is much to look at. But once inside, except for the atrium, the building disappears. This is an artist’s and an art-lovers dream.”