A production of Bizet’s “Carmen” is going to be staged on the streets of Seville, where the opera is set. “Thousands of spectators will be invited to follow the tale of doomed love as it is played out around city landmarks. Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura will direct only 10 performances as part of the city’s international music festival starting in September.”
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NY Subway Musicians Go To Korea
New York subway musicians are a constan presence underground. One entrepreneur thought they would be a hit in the Seoul subway, which doesn’t have performers. So she rounded up some players and flew them to Korea. “They were featured on Korean talk shows and news shows, and their faces were all over the papers. And the buzz only increased as the days passed. On the day of their second performance, the musicians arrived at GangNam station to find several hundred people sitting quietly on the floor, some with their own mats, waiting for the music to start. By the time the trip ended two weeks later, the five musicians were the toast of the town, featured in just about every newspaper, magazine and TV show of note.”
Restoring Baghdad’s Culture
“Baghdad may once have rivaled Rome as a symbol of urban splendor, but most of its historic landmarks are gone. Many of the uniform beige subdivisions and drab commercial buildings constructed in the last 50 years are crumbling — an apt symbol of the failures of modernization. The city’s ornate palaces are painful reminders of the authoritarian rule of Saddam Hussein, who is now in American captivity. Coping with this architectural and cultural loss is clearly beyond the scope of responsibility of the U.S. occupying authority.”
Stratford Signs Exec Director To 2015
Ontario’s Stratford Festival (one of Canada’s largest arts organizations) has signed executive director Antoni Cimolino to a contract extension that runs until 1015. “Under Cimolino’s stewardship, ticket sales since 1998 have increased from 523,000 to more than 600,000 and the festival has been in a budget surplus in each year of his administration. The operating budget has increased from $34-million to $51-million annually.”
Pop Goes The Culture
Pop culture is everywhere. TV is pop culture. Ergo, there’s more and more TV about pop culture. “The extent to which pop culture has become the focus of more and more TV networks is undeniable. It’s the nature of it. Pop culture is the stuff everybody is talking about, and if everybody is talking about it, networks are naturally going to want to find programming that taps into that.”
Theatre U
Why should someone go to a university theatre program in Texas rather than work at a proper theatre? Greg Leaming, artistic director of Southern Methodist University’s theatre program says his program can do things other theatres can’t. “There’s no reason why a person can’t decide to go to the theater and say, ‘Let’s go to SMU.’We have the resources to do larger things than professional theaters can afford to tackle these days, and do them well. We just have to keep the bar raised good and high.”
Union Saves Music Program
Oakland Technical High School was going to lose its music program until America’s largest union came up with the money to save it. “The 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union, which represents school employees and has strong ties in Oakland, donated more than $91,300 to the school at a ceremony last Wednesday in honor of International Human Rights Day. The money pays for the music director position and keeps several music programs afloat for one year, such as the pep squad band, piano classes and a choral program. The donation also sets up a student chorus called Voices of Justice.”
More On Conductor Judging
Last week New York Times critic John Rockwell posed the question: who can better judge a conductor – the audience or the players working for the conductor. Michelle Dulak disagrees with how Rockwell framed his question, as well as how he went about answering it. “There is, of course, a sense in which musicians are self-serving. They aren’t typically looking for comfort or ease, exactly; but they are looking for something, and it may not be exactly what the audience — or rather the critics — want. To read Rockwell, you’d think he was not merely a critic but the director of a critics’ PAC (Political Action Committee).”
American TV’s Longest-Running Shows
What are the 20 longest-running shows on American television? More or less the same as they were last year. Longevity means never having to say goodbye.
What Happened To Korea’s “Age Of Culture?”
When he came to power last February, South Korea’s new President Roh Moo-hyun declared that the 21st Century would be the age of culture and that he would help make it happen. But “like so many other quotes taken from the outspoken chief of nation, the depth of commitment to actually materializing his rhetoric remains questionable, at least after the administration’s unproductive first 10-months of hollow debates, confusions and scarce achievements in cultural policies.”