Paul Daniel is the beleaguered conductor of the English National Opera. How will the company claw its way out of its current managerial and financial difficulties? “A period like this — when people have got the willies about what the hell is going on in our society — is exactly the time for arts organisations to put on interesting, provocative shows! That’s what ENO is about. It is a very volatile opera company. It takes risks. It’s not very good at doing tradition, and I’m proud of that.”
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The Evolving Opera
Opera continues to stretch as an artform. How about a “not-so-underground music world that lives the boundary-less, non-hierarchical ethic of communal musicmaking, an ethic that some classical opera composers might hold up as an ideal but have rarely put into practice with any success. ‘Nitrate Hymnal’ is described by the Washington Performing Arts Society as multimedia, interactive, post-punk, hybrid and several other things as well, which adds up to: You have to see it to know what it’s about.”
The Orwell Contradiction
How is it that George Orwell is interpreted in such contradictory ways? “Legacy is not the best word to use to describe Orwell’s influence. He was a contradictory fellow: people read him in his own time in part because they didn’t know what he would think about an issue, and he often took positions against the conventional wisdom of even the political groups with which he was most closely allied. So it is impossible to know what Orwell would have said about anything. Yet people have been playing that game for fifty years.”
How Do You Manage Creativity?
A number of big media companies have been ousting top executives and replacing them with money guys. “This trooping of grey faces into the unruly media world marks a distinct change of mood. Talk of ‘vision’, ‘synergy’ or ‘new paradigms’ is out; the daily grind of evaluating and improving operating performance is paramount. Show business doesn’t attract leaders who know how to listen properly or leave people alone. But when you manage creative people, you must intrude carefully.”
Mickey Mouse, From Behind Bars
So how does Mickey Mouse feel now that the US Supreme Court has refused to spring him into the public domain? Jesse Walker asked him: So yeah, they created me. But they don’t want to let other people build on me when they make their own creations, the way they did when I was born. And now I’m locked up for another stinking 20 years! Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to greet kids at Disneyland every single day, always smiling, never slipping off for a cigarette?
Down Year For Denver Arts
Falling attendance, a downturn in funding, program cutbacks and layoffs. Last year marked a downturn in the financial fortunes of Denver arts groups.
Denver’s Capital Campaigns Go Underground
“Although arts groups openly discussed their multimillion-dollar drives at this time last year, now fund-raisers are guarding their plans like children hoarding Halloween candy. Others are either scaling back their plans or holding off altogether.”
Theatre Share
How can small theatres afford to mount shows that are beyond their financial resources? Joint productions. “The deal works like this: Great Lakes and St. Louis Rep split the upfront costs of the show, about $330,000. That covers the designers’ fees, the cost of sets and costumes, the director’s salary and wages for the cast and stage managers to rehearse four weeks. Then each theater pays for the run of the show at its own theater.”
Martha Graham Is Back
“Nearly three years after financial difficulties and litigation sidelined it, the ensemble re-emerges on Tuesday, when 24 company members and 4 students will resurrect 17 of Graham’s ballets — from the all-woman ‘Chronicle’ and ‘Heretic,’ created in the 1920’s and 30’s, to ‘Phaedra,’ Graham’s 1962 exercise in lust and lies, and the ubiquitous ‘Appalachian Spring’ — in a two-week run at the Joyce Theater.”
Broadway In Moscow?
Will big Broadway American musicals find an audience in Moscow? Results so far have been mixed. “These shows represent the risky yet enticing prospect of introducing blockbuster American musicals to the land of Stanislavski and Meyerhold. But the results have been so different that no one can really say whether it has been a good idea or not.”