“The odds are that the new production of La Bohème, which opens tonight at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, will be the last time that Scottish Opera performs as a full-scale, year-round national organisation. The crisis has a long, bitter history. Nobody has ever doubted that Scottish Opera has been pitifully under-funded for the job it is required to do, but all attempts to rationalise its operations have foundered.”
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London’s Giant Pickle
Norman Foster’s new skyscraper has “slipped so easily into the London skyline that it comes as a shock to discover that it officially opened only yesterday. That is the trouble with a very, very tall building. It takes so long to go up that, by the time it is finished, you feel you’ve known it for ever.”
Could Picasso Set A Record?
Some auction watchers are saying (no self-interest there) that Picasso’s “Boy With a Pipe” might set a record sale price. “Dealers and experts are betting that it could fetch as much as $100 million next week, eclipsing the world record set in 1990 when van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” sold at Christie’s in New York for $82.5 million.”
Ontario Orchestra Decides Not To Rehire Music Director
Several months ago the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony fired music director Martin Fischer-Dieskau. But an uprising among the orchestra’s supporters won a commitment to re-hire him. After months of negotiations, though, the orchestra has decided not to rehire him. “Negotiations between Fischer-Dieskau, the symphony board and management fell apart over the weekend, with the symphony eventually deciding Tuesday evening that it could not meet with the Berlin-based conductor’s demands, which reportedly included full artistic leadership of the symphony.”
The Writing Soldiers
A new National Endowment for the Arts program aims to teach soldiers how to write. The program will involve some popular literary stars. “Workshops in fiction and non-fiction will be open to U.S. military personnel and their families, at bases across America and elsewhere in the world. The instructors will include poet Marilyn Nelson, as well as Tom Clancy, the author of best-selling technothrillers, and the award winning novelists and short story writers Bobbie Ann Mason and Tobias Wolff.”
Spam Spam Spam Spam… (It’s A Hit)
Minnesota’s Spam Museum has become an oddball hit. “Opened in September 2001 on the site of an old Kmart, the Spam Museum has become something of a kitsch icon throughout the Midwest. The folks at the museum have taken out billboards up and down I-90 with quirky messages like: “The Spam Museum: Believe the Hype” and “Find Out What’s Inside.”
iTunes At One
“When Apple launched its online music store in the US on 28 April 2003, few could have predicted the impact it would have. But a year later, iTunes has helped transform the fortunes of the flagging global music industry, selling about 70 million songs and proving, once and for all, that there is a market for paid-for music online.”
The Man Who Loved Words
“What started out as a memorial service for Daniel J. Boorstin yesterday at the Library of Congress also turned into a lovefest for books, reading and the power of the written word. More than 200 people gathered in the Thomas Jefferson Building to honor the bookish, bespectacled, super-brainy man who was given to wearing bow ties. Boorstin served as the 12th librarian of Congress, from 1975 to 1987, and he died in late February of pneumonia at age 89.”
Museums Can’t Survive On Will Alone
“Since it moved into its cavernous new home, the story at [Detroit’s] Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History has been one of managerial blunders, lax oversight and financial calamity,” according to a newspaper investigation. The museum was pushed and cajoled into existence in the late 1990s with little in the way of realistic planning or appropriate funding, and the city has pumped $13 million into the institution since then. Now, with the museum unable to balance its books and in danger of not making each new payroll, a lack of business sense and basic accountability is being blamed for the mess.
Curtis Hits Its Goal Early
Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, arguably the nation’s top conservatory, has raised the $35 million it set as a goal in its latest fund drive several months ahead of schedule. The money will be distributed to several parts of the institution, but the bulk will go the the school’s endowment, which – at $127 million – is larger than that of all but a few major American orchestras, and is a huge boon for a school which does not charge tuition to its 161 students.