A glittering assortment of international luminaries attended this weekend’s reopening of Vencie’s La Fenice opera house, eight years after it burned down. “To Venetians and opera lovers throughout the world, the 18th century theater represents the soul of this unique lagoon city, and its resurrection from the ashes – Fenice means phoenix – was cause for celebration across Italy. Fans lined up throughout the day to admire the newly polished marble facade, with the Fenice symbol, a gilded phoenix, hanging in the entranceway.”
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St. Petersburg – City Of Writers
St. Petersburg is a great writer’s city, with its sophisticated culture and cramped bustling streets. You can visit the homes of some of Russia’s great writers: Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, Nabokov, Pushkin… an what do these places tell us of their former occupants?
Rijksmuseum Under The Knife
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum packed away its most famous Rembrandt this week as the museum begins four years of renovation. “The museum was built for 250,000 visitors a year, has been getting more than a million, and is being remodelled to accommodate twice that number.”
Frayling – The Man For The Job
Christopher Frayling is the new head of Arts Council England, and he seems well suited for it. “To those who regard themselves as on the inside, Frayling is known not as a popular historian but someone who has sat on every cultural committee going and has connections stretching from, where? – South Kensington to, presumably, 10 Downing Street. He is a trustee of the V&A, chairman of the Design Council, and has previously been a member of the Arts Council, as well as, less respectably, helping to choose the contents of the Millennium Dome’s faith zone. Frayling is even better connected than his predecessor in the job…”
Hot Classics
Literary classics are hot with readers right now, and they’re selling fast. “Baby boomer nostalgia, the rise of book clubs and a longing for ageless wisdom after 9/11 are among reasons for the trend cited by publishers, editors and authors. High profit margins for books out of copyright help, too.”
Met Broadcasts – Where Are Our Priorities?
Jan Herman wonders about the scale of American culture that would allow broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera go off the air. The Met needs $7 million to fund the broadcasts. “In major league baseball, $7 million would not pay the salary of a decent pitcher. The six stars of ‘Friends’ make $1 million each per half-hour episode. Compare this to the absolute top fee for a singer at the Met, Amercia’s most prestigious opera house: $15,000 per performance. No one, no matter how big, not even Placido Domingo, makes more. Mere bagatelle or pittance indeed. What does all this signify? Many things, of course. But one of them is that “given America’s wealth, talent, and educational resources, it could be the Athens of the modern world, but is fast losing that chance” and opting instead to be its Rome.”
It’s Official – We’re All Nerds
“Over the past decade, those cultural phenomena that we once filed as geeky minority pursuits have become our masters. The internet now boasts a global community numbering 679 million. Video gaming pulls in more annual revenue than Hollywood. For its part, the film industry seems increasingly in thrall to the comic-book movie , the sci-fi epic and the wizard fantasy. Next week sees the release of the final instalment in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, awash with elves and hobbits and surely the most monumental nerd-fest of the lot. All of which raises some frightening implications. Could it be that there are more nerds today than there were before?”
Are The Rockettes Eating Nutcracker’s Lunch?
With touring holiday Rockettes shows fanning out across America, many ballet companies are worried their audiences for Nutcrackers will be eaten up. But is it happening? The answer is complex and not entirely clear. “The discussion going on among ballet executives nationwide is a slice of an issue facing all arts leaders trying to grow audiences. Will the arrival of a new facility or show in town make the entire audience of arts patrons larger? Or does new competition simply ‘cannibalize’ existing audiences?”
“Y” Me?
Every generation has those writers who somehow help define it. But “Generation Y, the teens and early twenty–somethings who are said to represent the biggest chunk of pop culture marketing power, have no one who has encapsulated their generation in their writing so far. Sure, there are some authors their age but they haven’t produced a work meant to encapsulate the generation. Nor has one of them been called upon to become the chief essayist, chronicler or spokesperson for their peers. So where are they? ‘This isn’t a literary generation. It’s the MTV/high–speed Internet generation’.”
Broadway – Standing In
This has been Broadway’s Year of the Understudy. “Thanks to star walkouts, babies, influenza and the common cold, understudies – typically theater’s most obscure, least appreciated actors – have been stepping into the spotlight in record numbers.”