The Glastonbury Festival is not where you would generally expect to find fans of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but the UK rock fest is giving Brunhilde a chance anyway. This June, the English National Opera will travel to Glastonbury with 91 musicians and 11 soloists to perform the third act of Wagner’s “The Valkyries” before an audience of better than 100,000 fans, most of whom likely do not fit the standard profile of the opera enthusiast. For the ENO, it’s a chance to reach out to an untapped (and young) audience; for the festival, it’s just one more way to maintain its reputation as quirky and daring.
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Gehry vs. The TechnoGeeks
MIT’s new computer science building is a thing of beauty, “a gleaming 440,000-square-foot foundry for genius created by the world’s most famous designer of buildings. The Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences is the latest CAD-spun, holy-shit wonder from Frank Gehry. So all systems go? Ready for liftoff? Not exactly.” The technicians, engineers, and other tech geeks who will inhabit the place seem totally nonplussed by the whole building, labeling it “silly.” After all, to the technical mind, there is no real reason for a building to look the way that Gehry’s mind-bending structures inevitably do. Can logic and art coexist at MIT?
Anything For A Buck
With legal music downloading services like iTunes being judged as unqualified successes in the digital marketplace, you would think that the recording industry might finally be coming around to the notion that offering consumers a good deal on pop music is an effective way to build customer loyalty and increase revenue. But industry executives apparently aren’t satisfied with the existing model: not only have they consistently resisted efforts to introduce creative pricing into the download business, they seem determined to raise the standard per-song download cost as quickly as possible.
Broadway Aida To Close
After almost four and a half years the Disney musical “Aida” is closing on Broadway. It’s the first Disney musical on Broadway to close. “The Lion King,” which has been running for more than six years, remains one of Broadway’s biggest sellers. And “Beauty and the Beast” still draws sizable crowds after more than a decade.
Disney Blocks Distribution Of Michael Moore Film That Criticizes Bush
“The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush. A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company had the right to quash Miramax’s distribution of films if it deemed their distribution to be against the interests of the company. The executive said Mr. Moore’s film is deemed to be against Disney’s interests not because of the company’s business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore’s film, which does not have a release date, could alienate many.”
Why Are So Many Dancers Quitting The Royal Winnipeg?
Nine of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s 26 dancers are leaving the company? Why the exodus? According to two of the dancers, “the ballet company is not being challenged creatively — and they say that’s the fault of artistic director André Lewis.” Lewis has put the company on solid financial footing, but there is grumbling about his artistic choices.
Altman’s Joffrey Film – Does It Translate In UK?
Robert Altman’s film about the Joffrey Ballet hits the UK. “There is nothing in the British scene that quite compares with Arpino, Joffrey, or the weirdly dated choreography that the company performs. But has Altman managed to paint a more universal portrait of ballet in which British dancers can recognise themselves?”
Fire Destroys Southern California Arts Colony
A Southern California fire Sunday night destroyed Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, founded in 1979 in the foothills of Palomar Mountain. “The fire destroyed valuable antiques once owned by the colony’s late founders Ellen and Robert Dorland, including a Steinway grand piano believed to have been played by renowned Russian pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff.”
American Abstract V. European Story
Why is modern American dance abstract while European dance is largely narrative, asks Joan Acocella? “For the most part, our choreographers have been modernists, in the Clement Greenbergian sense. Their primary concern has been their medium, dance. While all that was coalescing over here, people in Europe were voting huge subsidies for the arts, which were part of their national pride. They were also living lives different from ours. In the First and Second World Wars, the Europeans saw their universe laid waste, as we did not. Consequently, I believe, many of them could not give up representation, narration. They had to keep talking about the modern world, trying to figure out how it turned out the way it did.”
I’ll Take Three Memories To Go…
The human mind is a mysterious thing. Or is it? “Memory-improving and memory-deleting medicines may be available within five to 10 years. More than 40 drugs aimed at improving memory are currently going through clinical trials with the US Food and Drug Administration.” Will there come a day when what we remember is the product of our own science?