After a $20 million renovation, the Kennedy Center Opera House is about to reopen. “The Washington Opera will resume performances there in the spring. In a typical year, the Opera House has 225 performances, attended by a total of 500,000 people. The renovations included a top-to-bottom cleaning, from the sprawling Austrian chandelier to the expanded orchestra pit. New features include a maple floor on the orchestra level. The red seats have been redone throughout the hall, along with cherry trim and arm rests.”
Blog
Morrison – A Difficult Read
“In these early years of the new millennium, a new Toni Morrison novel is a seismic event. She is a Nobel laureate and, at 72, is considered one of the country’s greatest living writers. Her always-ambitious novels, such as “Song of Solomon” and “Beloved,” are written on a grand scale and she has become iconic.
Year Of The Woman Singer
Women singers seem to be dominating World Music this year. “Not all of them are young, but their average age must be about 30. Ten years ago, the idea of a compilation of women’s music would have smacked of political correctness – now it’s simply what’s happening. It is of course a truism that pictures of attractive young women sell newspapers, CDs, books and films better than just about anything else. So, are Western record companies simply choosing the acts that are most marketable? Or does the phenomenon of the young world diva reflect deeper global upheavals? And what, if anything, does this sudden upsurge in female creativity add up to musically?”
At Home With Pinchas Zukerman
It’s been five years since Pinchas Zukerman took over as music director of Ottawa’s National Arts Center Orchestra. “Whatever the specific contributions of each of the current administrators, the National Arts Center Orchestra seems to be thriving, and this at a time when many Canadian orchestras are suffering much the same economic woes as their American counterparts. True, it operates on a relatively small scale. With 50 permanent members, it is about half the size of the largest North American orchestras.”
Netrebko – Top Of The Opera World
“Having once scrubbed floors at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, the home of the celebrated Kirov Opera, Anna Netrebko (pronounced nuh-TREB-koh), 32, is now the company’s biggest young star. Her luminous lyric soprano voice, impeccable technique and heartfelt acting have won raves from San Francisco to Vienna. Since the recent release of her debut solo recording of opera arias, she has been featured in classical music publications and fashionably photographed for glamour magazines.”
Fighting Over How Things Look (Traditionally Speaking)
Disputes between architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs over the tower above the World Trade Center site are the latest chapter in a long history of architectural disputes. “The absence of knife play over the Freedom Tower does not guarantee that the intended partnership will run smoothly. A meeting between the architects last Monday was described as positive by both sides. History, however, suggests that the turmoil will continue. There is a long tradition, in New York, of architectural bargaining and bickering that has produced gems like Rockefeller Center, duds (let’s be honest now) like the World Trade Center and compromises like Lincoln Center and the United Nations. Not only is the record a rancorous one, but Mr. Libeskind and Mr. Childs are navigating challenges unlike any faced by their predecessors.”
Life Of Kahn
American Architect Louis Kahn was a brilliant architect and a flawed man. Herbert Muschamp pronounces that a documentary of his life is a “wonder of a movie” That “should put a stop to the notion that architecture is a less creative form of practice than music, painting, literature or dance. I have never seen or read a more penetrating account of the inner life of an architect — or of architecture itself — than that presented in this movie.”
Kahn – Figuring Out The Mystery
Even though he was one of the 20th Century’s premiere architects, Louis Kahn was a remote presence. “Who was Kahn? A genius? A cad? A man whose accomplishments transcended such judgments? In the end, not even Kahn himself seemed to know. He was found dead in New York’s Penn Station in 1974, his body unclaimed for three days because he’d crossed out his address in his passport. Why?”
Louis Kahn – A Life In Pictures
A new documentary about the life of architect Louis Kahn is one of the best movies of the year, writes Carrie Rickey. “The most penetrating insights into Kahn come not from the mandarins of modern architecture, nor the architect’s fiercely intelligent mistresses Anne Tyng and Harriet Pattison (Nathaniel’s mother), nor his children, but from the janitors in Dhaka who pray in the mosque of the capital building that a Jew built for Muslims. For these men who mistakenly call the architect Louis Farrakhan, the building is a vessel of the spirit.”
Kahn: One Of The Best
“There is something about walking into a Louis Kahn building that makes analysis seem superfluous, if not silly. The best ones just succeed—not simply at keeping out the rain or the cold but at suggesting something important about our relationship with the built world. It may sound too basic, or too sappy, to say that the reason for Kahn’s continuing appeal is that he sought an architecture that was more concerned with the timeless than the fashionable. But it’s also the truth.”