Renate Langer, a former child actress from Germany, claims that she travelled to the filmmaker’s house in the Swiss resort town of Gstaad in 1972, when she was 15, and that he raped her there.
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What Is The ‘Ideal Direction’ That The Nobel Literature Judges Look For? (‘Ideal Direction’? Blame Alfred Nobel)
“The Swedish industrialist said he wanted the prize to recognize ‘the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.'” That direction has changed several times over the past 116 years, having gone to writers as wildly different as Sigmund Freud, Winston Churchill, Pearl S. Buck, Rabindranath Tagore, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquez, Doris Lessing, and Bob Dylan. Jim Heintz looks at what directions that ideal might be heading in this year.
2,000-Year-Old Statue From Palmyra, Damaged By ISIS, Resurrected in Damascus
“The Lion of al-Lāt, … which stretches 11 feet high and weighs 15 tons, was moved to Damascus after Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra in March 2016. Polish archaeologist [Bartosz] Markowski was able to restore the Lion of al-Lāt over the course of two months, and says approximately half of the resurrected statue is comprised of the original.”
Ghost Ship Fire Defendants Plead Not Guilty To Manslaughter
Derick Almena, 47, the lead tenant of the Oakland warehouse and leader of its jury-rigging into an artists’ live-work complex, and Max Harris, 27, creative director of the complex and organizer of the party last December where the deadly fire broke out, face 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter. They were arrested in June and remain in jail, with bail at $750,000.
Ghost Ship Warehouse Owner Avoids Criminal Charges, Gets $3.1M Insurance Payout
“Claims Adjusting Group has reserved $3.1 million to pay Chor Ng, who owns the [Oakland] Fruitvale District warehouse and adjacent properties, to cover her basic property loss and liability policy. … However, Ng’s $6 million liability insurance maximum will likely never make its way to the dozens of victims suing her and other agencies for the deadly fire, one insurance expert says.”
Seattle Symphony Hires Thomas Dausgaard As Next Music Director
Meet the new boss, same as the old substitute boss: Dausgaard, a 54-year-old Dane who takes over from Ludovic Morlot in 2019, has been the SSO’s principal guest conductor since 2014. “It was his 2015 Seattle Symphony Sibelius Festival performances,” writes Melinda Bargreen, “that made the tall, silver-haired Dane a popular figure among the city’s classical-music lovers, with standing ovations after every performance, and the kind of connection with players and audiences that conductors dream of.”
New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center Give Up On $500M Renovation Of Geffen Hall
Both organizations have new presidents – Debora Spar at Lincoln Center and Deborah Borda at the Phil – who did not like what they saw when they looked at the plan’s costs, schedules (which were getting longer), and fundraising prospects. Said Spar, “There was a general sense that the project had just gotten too complicated.”
Supreme Court To Decide If US Terrorism Victims Can Have Antiquities From Iran Seized As Compensation
The plaintiffs were injured in a 1997 attack by Hamas in Jerusalem and received a federal court ruling that the government of Iran, as a funder of Hamas, was liable for their injuries. In 2003, plaintiffs won a $71 million default judgment against Iran (which refused to participate in the case), and they tried to have seized Persian antiquities on loan to several US museums, including the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. As Martha Lufkin reports, the case now turns on the terrorism exception in sovereign-immunity law and on what qualifies as “commercial activity.”
Orlando Ballet Searching For Yet Another Executive Director
“The organization, which has faced significant financial struggles, announced Tuesday it is looking for its eighth leader in six years. The difference this time, officials say, is that the ballet has reached a more stable financial position – thanks in part to work by Caroline Miller, who after 16 months in the top job, resigned for personal reasons.” (In this case, that’s not a “to spend more time with family” euphemism.)
Lang Lang Prepares To Give His First Piano-Five-Hands Concert
For Wednesday night’s Carnegie Hall season-opening gala with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chinese superstar was booked to play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Chick Corea in a seldom-heard two-piano version. Then, this past spring, Lang Lang injured his left arm – he says it was by practicing Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand too hard. So he’s bringing in a 14-year-old protégé to play the left-hand part alongside him.