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Belfast Arts Center On Hold

Plans for a major new arts center in Belfast have been put on hold. “The proposal was to house the Lyric Theatre, the Old Museum Arts Centre and the School of Music on a site within the Cathedral Quarter. It was hoped that the move would create a thriving cultural area in the heart of the city. However, the £27m price tag and disagreements over the details of the plan have seen it fail to develop.”

Duveen – America’s Art Connection

In the early years of the 20th Century, art dealer Lord Duveen helped America’s wealthiest become important art collectors. Their collections form the basis of the country’s great museums. But “the most important legacy of their collaboration has been its toxic effect on the intellectual culture of art: it accelerated a divorce of connoisseurship from criticism. Duveen subsumed fine discrimination to the legitimatization of wealth, a function that, augmented by modern forensic technologies, it continues to perform.”

The Greatest Career In Opera History

Now that Luciano Pavarotti often shares a stage with the likes of Celine Dion, it’s easy to forget that he and Herbert Breslin truly did create perhaps the greatest career in opera history. When Breslin first met the Modena baker’s son in the late sixties, Pavarotti was singing in minor European theaters, a young (and even then overweight) tenor with a beautiful voice, a broad smile, and an innate charisma. What he lacked was an agent to marshal those gifts into a marketable package. Breslin was an interloper in the classical-music world, a product of corporate America.”

How Do You make New From Old?

There are no new sounds in music – just musicians using familiar notes in new ways. But. “It is rare that governments and the industry at large are ahead of the curve when it comes to cultural trends, and recent legal rulings have made the creation of new music from appropriated sources problematic. It is a sensitive issue because while intellectual property needs to be protected, new intellectual properties can only be born in a nurturing environment and appropriation has become such an important element in a substantial body of new work.”

Cleveland Orchestra Continues Contract Talks

The Cleveland Orchestra and its musicians agree to continue negotiating on a new contract after the old one expired Sunday. Musicians say this is a contract about maintaining the orchestra’s elite status. “If you fall below a certain level, you are going to fall out of the top tier of orchestras. I am concerned that Cleveland will no longer be a destination orchestra, but an orchestra musicians want to get to and then go to another orchestra.”

Theatre Of Politics

“No doubt that may be the feeling of some people who believe theater should be uplifting and inspiring rather than critical and political. They may believe theaters should focus on uncontroversial classics by dead playwrights rather than rabble-rousing by decidedly live and lively ones. But in this election season, there are some who like their theater on the hot side.”

Your Flop Of Flops

“While a West End contract would once have come with a steady pay cheque, those job-secure days have long gone. London has never suffered from the same “smash or flop” psychosis that drives Broadway (where stories abound of actors celebrating first nights at fashionable restaurants, only to have their champagne glasses wrestled from their grasp by waiters just seconds after a duff review has appeared in the first edition of The New York Times), but the indications are that we are rapidly heading down the same road. With rare exceptions, shows today are often either enormous hits or ‘snigger-at-it-while-it-lasts’ shockers.”