The Richmond (VA) Symphony reports that it is officially on the list of smaller American orchestras that are not on the verge of folding up their tents and vanishing into the night. “According to a nearly complete year-end tally, the symphony ran a $26,478 loss after spending $3.8 million in the 2002-03 season. The loss could shrink by as much as $20,000 after late-arriving revenues are counted in, said David Fisk, the symphony’s executive director.”
Blog
Berlin Can’t Afford Three Opera Houses
There’s no lack of public support for Berlin’s opera scene, which continues to thrive despite a sluggish economy. But the city is out of money, and appears to be on the verge of shuttering at least one of the city’s three most prominent opera houses. “The three opera houses — the Staatsoper and Komische Oper in the former east and the Deutsche Oper in the west — are relics of the division of Berlin. And now they are victims of post-unification budget cutbacks. And like the plot of a Puccini opera, this drama is very likely to end unhappily.”
The Film World Loses One Of Its Finest
The actress Katherine Hepburn has died. Her career spanned more than half a century, and encompassed a breathtaking diversity of work. She won her first Oscar in 1933 for Morning Glory, and her last, for On Golden Pond, 48 years later. Her work with Spencer Tracy is the stuff of cinema legend, and she was completely at home in roles from Cleopatra to Violet Vennable. Hepburn was 96.
Baghdad Symphony Rises From The Ashes Of A City
The Baghdad Symphony Orchestra has played a concert. Consider the gravity of such a statement. In a city where many residents are without electricity, or water, or basic medical care, and where American and British troops continue to conduct daily raids searching for supporters of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, 50 musicians sat on a stage in formal attire, and brought music back to the Iraqi capital for the first time since the invasion began. The first work on the program was the patriotic song, “My Nation,” virtually banned under Hussein’s rule.
Impressionism You Can Really Get Into
J. Seward Johnson Jr. can make a bronze sculpture so lifelike and convincing that you’ll want to talk to it. But his latest assignment is far more daunting than any park-bench mannequin. Johnson is recreating the works of the great Impressionist painters, in bronze, in real-life scale, and in three dimensions. “Visitors [to Johnson’s exhibit in Washington] will be able to walk into Vincent van Gogh’s ‘The Bedroom’ in Arles, France. They will be invited to touch the objects, to the expected horror of conservative museum folks. They will even be able to lie down on the bed, though they won’t be able to get under the covers.”
The World’s Biggest Jigsaw Puzzle Meets The World’s Best Math Geeks
“A mathematical formula is allowing Italian researchers to recompose one of the most complicated jigsaw puzzles in history: the fragmented 15th century frescoes which once decorated the Ovetari Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani at Padua.” The fragments were photographed, digitized, and are now being painstakingly reconstructed on computers, with the aid of “‘circular harmonics’ — mathematical formulas that are able to identify and ‘retain the memory’ of the piece’s orientation.”
Donizetti’s Lost Opera
Nearly two decades ago, journalist Will Crutchfield uncovered a stack of moldy old manuscript papers filled with musical jumbles, abandoned compositions, and what appeared to be pieces of an unpublished opera by Donizetti. “It didn’t take long to discover the pages were in fact a lost opera. But it took nearly two decades, and return trips to Europe, to piece together a version capable of being produced. On July 17, that big step in this ongoing detective story will be taken at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, N.Y., when Crutchfield himself will conduct Elisabeth, the never-produced Donizetti opera he rediscovered.
Forget the Museum! How About That Storage Shed?
This week, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art will close for two months of extensive renovation and expansion, the latest in a string of American museums to break ground on expensive new wings. But even more impressive than the renovation plans is the $5 million facility where the museum will house its 11,000-piece collection during construction. “Even with its artwork under one roof, the High will have enough room left over to accelerate a pack rat’s heart: 21,472 square feet of amply lit, high-ceilinged, generously shelved capacity… The storage facility is equipped with high-tech fixtures, too, such as the shiny white vapor-tight cabinets ($4,000 apiece) that currently house the ceramics collection.”
Joseph Chaiken, 67
Joseph Chaiken, the much-esteemed actor and director who was involved in dozens of regional theatre productions in Atlanta and Los Angeles, along with his work in New York’s off-Broadway scene, has died. “The esteemed actor and director, who founded New York’s avant-garde Open Theater in 1963 and won five Obie Awards, died Sunday at his Greenwich Village home of congenital heart failure. He was 67 and had suffered from aphasia since experiencing a massive stroke in 1984.”
A Year In The Theatre
Peter Marks reflects on his first year covering theatre in Washington DC. “For a critic making his way through his freshman year in the area’s playhouses, these were the moments that defined the season, that most exuberantly lifted the spirit and dazzled the senses and boggled the mind.”