Overseers of Tokyo’s New National Theatre wanted to improve the quality of their opera productions and decided that they needed to hire a European to accomplish it. But the Austrian director hired for the job has angered Japanese musicians and singers with his internationalist outlook.
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Next On Springer… I Love It!
Jerry Springer, The Opera is a big hit in London, and Ben Brantley loves it. “Who could possibly forget that exultant song of self-celebration that begins, “This is my Jerry Springer moment . . .”? That number, performed by a grown woman in baby clothes on a swing, comes from “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” the four-alarm fire of a show at the National Theater, and I find myself singing it while doing household chores, the way my mother used to with melodies from “Oklahoma!” and “My Fair Lady.” The scary part is that though it’s a song about parading your exotic sexual tastes on national television, I don’t think, “What a camp,” when I remember it; instead, I feel kind of starry-eyed.”
NY Phil Votes To Pursue Carnegie Merger
The New York Philharmonic board has voted to pursue a merger with Carnegie Hall rather than becoming a tenant at the hall. “That the Philharmonic even considered a tenancy arrangement after it had not been mentioned indicates the level of concern among some trustees that the orchestra might sacrifice its independence by becoming part of Carnegie Hall.”
Mamet: Playwrights Must Confront Violence Of Racism
David Mamet says playwrights have a responsibility to confront the violent past of racism in America. “I am old enough to remember separate waiting rooms, restrooms, and drinking fountains in the American south: one set for blacks, one for whites. Looking back, one says: ‘Was there ever a greater, more widespread or persistent delusion than that of racial superiority?’ And the answer was and is: ‘No.’ So, though I decry and abominate the computer, the mass media and, indeed, most things that differentiate the 21st century from the 19th, I remind myself that I have lived to see the beginning of the end of American racism – and that is something to have lived to see.”
Saving Art For The Nation?
Next week the UK’s National Gallery will learn if it can get the money to buy a Raphael before it is sold to Americans. “Arguments have been raging over the fate of the painting with varying degrees of hysteria, sentimentality and anger since October. The Getty has been accused of ‘baby-snatching’; there has been talk of “raids on the British patrimony”. The language employed – including the nakedly over-emotional, quasi-evangelical notion of ‘saving’ – has not been helpful. Anyone would think that the National Gallery is protecting the picture from a gang of criminals, masterminded by evil geniuses in the guise of aristocrats, Sotheby’s experts and ruthless foreign curators, intent on grabbing the Raphael and hurling it into the Thames.”
Cleaning Michelangelo No Joke
“The row over how to clean David has been reported around the world as almost comic, but it is not funny at all. It is frightening because, ultimately, those involved will do what they want. And if they permanently damage the greatest sculpture in the world, that will just be tough. David is a global property, a defining achievement of humanity. Italy has no more right to damage its surface than the Taliban had to blow up Buddhist masterpieces. Anyway, this is not Italy-bashing; it is a Florentine who has sounded the alarm.”
Book Sales Down This Year
The balance sheet for publishing is not looking good so far this year. Book sales were down again in May, and while Harry Potter sales should give the industry a bump, overall things are gloomy. “For the first five months of 2003, bookstore sales were down 1.7%, to $6.12 billion, with sales falling in three of the first five months of the year.”
The Old Write Way
“Fountain pens are no longer remembrances, as they were a generation ago. Nor are they simply faddish symbols of resistance to technology. That counter-trend peaked a few years back. Today, this old and stylish implement has achieved an uneasy peace with the PDA and the keyboard. We deploy our pens less often these days, true. But we find that this makes them all the more important when we do. At least that’s the rationale behind the lively and mostly under-noticed global enterprise of quality 21st century fountain pens.”
A Sweet Romance
We all know what Romantic music is. Even romantic music. But what does it mean to play it romantically? “The distinction is not trivial, for it is possible to play any kind of music—including the intensely subjective music of such romantic-era composers as Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt—in an infinite number of ways, some of which do not sound “romantic,” just as it is possible to “romanticize” the music of pre- and post-romantic composers. Yet the music itself remains unchanged, even when it is being performed in what we may perceive as an un-idiomatic way.”
Air & Space Museum Needs Money To Fly
The Smithsonian’s new $225 million Air & Space Museum still needs $97 million before it starts construction. But “when it’s finished, the center will be the largest construction project in the Smithsonian’s history and the only one built completely with private funds. The main hangar, which will house some 200 aircraft, will be the length of three football fields and 10 stories high. On June 12, the annex accepted delivery of an Air France Concorde. Work is also under way to refurbish another big draw, the Space Shuttle Enterprise. And a newly reassembled Enola Gay, the bomber that flew the missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will be displayed as well.”