Playwright Arthur Miller was awarded this year’s Jerusalem Prize, but for last week’s ceremony he sent a videotape in which he criticized Israel’s policies. This angered Jerusalem’s newly elected ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor who said “Miller was a ‘universal dramatist’ who had reached his peak more than 50 years ago. He condemned the tendency of intellectuals to ‘always criticise the actions of the state of Israel and sometimes even impose colonial criteria on the issues’. He further attacked Miller for sitting on a ‘literary Olympus tens of thousands of kilometres from here to voice criticism’.”
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Did Da Ponte Steal Don Giovanni From Stoker?
“An article published yesterday on the front page of one of Italy’s leading national newspapers draws attention to some remarkable parallels between the story of Bram Stoker’s seminal Gothic villain Dracula and that of the archetypal Latin cad Don Giovanni depicted in Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto more than 100 years earlier.”
LI Philharmonic Lets Exec Go – Blame His Inexperience
Last year when the Long Island Philharmonic went looking for a new top executive, they came back with Christopher von Zwehl. Of course he had no background in music; apparently the orchestra’s board was impressed that von Zwehl had raised money for “a proposed freight ferry from Kennedy Airport to New Jersey” and had been instrumental in “bringing the battleship USS New Jersey to that state.” Last week the orchestra let von Zwehl go, admitting he wasn’t up for the job. The problem? “Lack of knowledge about music and the classical music business was a hindrance.”
The Curse Of Middle-Of-The-Road Opera
Is opera becoming too much the same wherever you go? “Travel to New York, Paris or London, and the similarity of the performances can make it difficult to tell one night at the opera from another. This is “international” opera – the type that could happen anywhere, any time, anyhow. Today’s top singers travel around with their latest roles in their baggage just as much as their illustrious predecessors did. No, the real problem today is that singers on the lower rungs of the ladder have started to travel just as frenetically. Those companies that still want to retain a resident ensemble are finding it impossible to hang on to the singers they need.”
Berlin Saves Its Opera Houses
After fierce battles for a year, during which cash-strapped Berlin considered closing one of its three opera houses, the city has decided to continue funding all three. “At a packed press conference last week, federal cultural minister Christina Weiss announced the funding of a long-term rescue package to enable all three embattled institutions to continue independent operations under a corporate-type umbrella structure, the Berlin Opera Foundation, to be set up Jan. 1.”
McLennan: Why Classical Music Has Fallen Off The Cultural Literacy Menu
What do you need to know to be considered culturally literate these days? Certainly a knowledge of current movies, an idea of what books are hot this season, maybe a passing interest in what’s wowing Broadway and an awareness of the latest blockbuster show to hit the local museum. But where once classical music was a core art, it is now no longer essential, one of those things educated people believe they ought to know something about in order to be considered educated.
ABT’s Hands-On Chairman
Lewis S. Ranieri, became chairman of American Ballet Theatre last August after “pledging $2 million to the company. While chairmen typically contribute to a cultural institution’s general operating fund, Mr. Ranieri has personally paid for specific expenditures, including increased marketing, dancers’ housing, consultants’ fees and bathroom renovations at the company’s headquarters. Chairmen usually do not work on the premises of their arts organizations, but Mr. Ranieri created an office for himself out of a dance studio at Ballet Theater’s Manhattan headquarters — he pays the rent for his space — where he puts in time almost every day despite his job as lead director at Computer Associates on Long Island. Mr. Ranieri’s unorthodox approach raises questions, arts executives say.”
The Link Between Language, Dementia And Creativity
“Where in the brain does artistic creativity reside? Can the “damaged” mind give rise to true art?” There appears to be a link between some kinds of dementia and creativity. “One of the tragic aspects of it is the beginning of creativity heralds the onset of disease. And as the disease progresses, we go through a period where someone perfects the artistic skill, so it steadily improves as the disease is progressing, and then the disease eventually overwhelms the process and eventually the creativity is gone.”
Miami Building Its Center Of Art
Miami’s new performing arts center is rising under construction cranes. “For many, the $255 million PAC – which includes a 2,200-seat symphony hall and a 2,480-seat ballet opera house – represents the arrival of Miami’s burgeoning cultural scene. The PAC has drawn comparisons to New York City’s Lincoln Center and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. But beneath the surface, Miami’s arts community remains a work in progress that will take at least another generation to complete.”
Is The Performing Arts Center A Dinosaur?
Is the performing arts center an idea whose time has passed? “Those performing arts complexes were conceived in the ’50s, when the country was puffing out its civic chest and no one quite knew what burgeoning suburbs would mean for the cities they surrounded. By the time the first of the complexes was ready for audiences — Lincoln Center in 1962 — there were 68 others under construction, or planned, around the United States. Many were seen as tickets to legitimacy, playing the role that sports stadiums and museums would assume in later years. Now, decades later, the leaders of these monuments to the arts find themselves searching for new uses of aging halls and for more diverse new generations of patrons, all while spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make their fortress-like campuses more open. The performing arts center is being rethought, if not reinvented.”