“Bayreuth is again in the news, thanks to the withdrawal of iconoclastic Danish film-maker Lars von Trier from the 2006 Ring. Von Trier’s Ring would have been a splashy event, making headlines well beyond the opera world. He had already worked on the project for two years. Stage mock-ups were to have begun this month. But The Ring has defeated him. This week he was forced to admit he couldn’t realise his ideas within the limitations of a theatre. Given Von Trier’s evocations on film of psychological awareness and the tangled webs of family (Dogville, The Idiots), he was an inspired choice – but an extremely risky one. He said he preferred David Bowie to Wagner. He had no record in theatre or opera.”
Blog
NYT Critic Muschamp To Leave Architecture Beat?
“Herbert Muschamp, The New York Times’ fanciful architecture critic, has told his bosses that he’s getting tired of his current duties and intends to step down before long.”
Bach In The Clubs
Cellist Matt Haimovitz on playing classical music in pop music clubs: “There’s a certain kind of music that, for me, belongs in an intimate space. There’s something authentic about playing Bach in a club. We’re always talking about authentic performances, but for me there’s something wrong with putting baroque music in a place like Roy Thomson Hall. It’s much more appropriate in a smaller setting — in something like the coffeehouses Bach was familiar with.”
SF Plan To Merge Arts Agencies Worries Arts Advocates
San Francisco’s mayor says that to deal with the city’s deficit, he wants to combine the area’s two major art funders. “But in moving the Grants for Arts program under the Arts Commission umbrella, many say, the mandates of the two different agencies could clash and endanger a fragile arts ecology in San Francisco.”
Police Hunt For Person Who Hung Stealth Pictures In Major Museums
A nationwide manhunt is underway for someone who hung paintings of presidents Bush and Clinton in the Metropolitan Museum, Guggenheim, National Gallery in Washington DC, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “The paintings — 15 inches by 9 inches — portray the commanders-in-chief on a background of ground-up dollar bills. The wacky spree has prompted a sweeping investigation by the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, as well as local police in three cities.”
Guggenheim To Get Facelift
The Guggenheim Museum is to undergo a $25 million 2-year facelift. “Like many Wright buildings, the New York landmark is plagued with cracks, leaks and corroding surfaces.
Art Historians Sue Over Vuillard Catalogues
“The authors and publishers of the Edouard Vuillard catalogue raisonné and of the exhibition catalogue of the recently touring Vuillard retrospective are being sued in French and US courts by two art historians who claim the books plagiarise their work.”
NZ Ballet On A Roll
The Royal New Zealand Ballet has had a great year. Attendance is up 38 percent over the previous year and “the Ballet has turned around its fortunes since the financial crises of the 1990s. Subscriptions have tripled in the three years since 2000.”
Berlin Drops Gestapo Museum
The Berlin government is dropping plans for a museum documenting the Gestapo. The federal German government will now take up the project and is announcing a new architectural competition to design the building.
Calls For Scottish Opera Boss To Step Down
A growing chorus of critics is demanding that Scottish Opera boss Duncan McGhie resign, after the company was told of a draconian plan to downsize. Critics “accuse the management of repeatedly failing to steer Scottish Opera out of financial trouble and running up a £4.5 million debt that forced first the Scottish Arts Council and then the Executive to step in.”