Category: people

As Peter Gelb prepares to take the helm of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, he has served notice that he intends to make some major changes to the venerable company. “Gelb argues that this approach will attract, not threaten, the opera establishment: ‘By having more new productions in any given season – of standard repertoire as well as new operas – the Met will become an even more attractive place for the top singers. The greatest artists and conductors want to be stimulated.’ Ah – but do opera audiences? There’s the rub.”

JK Rowling complained of a paper shortage near her home. “Fans, who are anxiously waiting for the seventh and final Harry Potter book, sent Rowling everything from a single sheet of paper to entire notepads. A paper merchant even delivered a set of notebooks embossed with the author’s name.”

After a decade working together, Rem Koolhaus and Joshua Prince-Ramus are splitting up, with Prince-Ramus taking all of the architecture firm’s 35 members of the New York office with him. “So, no hard feelings, no intrigue? No, both men insist, their parting is simply a response to unfolding circumstances and an attempt to clarify issues of authorship and control. ‘It ultimately became a clear decision, but not an easy one,’ said Mr. Prince-Ramus, 36. ‘The sadness is something we deal with in private,’ said Mr. Koolhaas, 61.”

“With several colleagues, including the Danish artist Asger Jorn and the Belgian artist known as Corneille, Mr. Appel founded Cobra in 1948 at an international conference in Paris. The movement’s original name was Reflex, but it came to be called Cobra, an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the cities from which its founders came. The Cobra aesthetic — abstract, spontaneous, expressionistic, riotous with color — was a shot across the bow of de Stijl, which then dominated Dutch art with its rigid insistence on geometric form. It was also a reaction against the hegemony of French Surrealism.”

“Dmitri Hvorostovsky was the first in a series of star baritones to achieve near-instantaneous operatic fame. And the way he’s going – with more and bigger opera roles, plus concerts that draw five-figure crowds in his native Russia – any eclipse may be far in the future.”

It wasn’t easy for internationally acclaimed architect Richard Rogers to make it in New York, but last week’s announcement that he would design one of the new Ground Zero towers solidified his reputation in America, as it had already been solidified in his native Britain. “He has long been a persuasive, articulate and often lonely voice on the importance of design and density in cities. His practice is famously run with a constitution, the directors earning a maximum of six times the salary of the lowest-paid architect, and last year £1m was donated to charity.”

Chris Ware may well be the most depressing “comic artist” in history, but that hasn’t stopped the engaging creator of Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid On Earth from enjoying great success and securing a regular spot in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Now, a new exhibition of Ware’s work is being mounted in Chicago. “The extreme self-absorption of his characters can be maddening and yet their angst is so real and so respectfully drawn — unlike many comic artists, Ware never makes fun of his subjects’ bodies or dilemmas — that the viewer-reader simply can’t look away.The very tenderness with which Ware treats his subjects draws us in.”

That Sigmund Freud remains a controversial figure to this day is testament to the impact his life and work had on the modern world. But is it possible that his impact on art and artists was greater than any scientific legacy he enjoys? “It’s not just that Freud is an influence on art history and literary theory: he is an influence on art. He has had a constant resonance since the surrealist movement first claimed him as (in Freud’s puzzled words) its ‘patron saint’ in the 1920s – which means a hostile critic of Freud has to dismiss most modern art.”

David Robertson is one year into his tenure as music director of the once-beleagured St. Louis Symphony, and the reviews, both at home and on the road, have been good. But Robertson has always been known for his desire to connect with the larger community, and so, as the SLSO begins to promote its next season, he has taken to holding “town hall meetings” to which SLSO patrons are invited for the purpose of grilling their music director, even if they just want to complain about all the new music he’s programming.

As chairman of the American Symphony Orchestra League, Henry Fogel has been on a seemingly endless national tour in recent years, talking to anyone who will listen about the future of orchestras and the changes the industry needs to embrace to thrive in the modern world. First on Fogel’s list: orchestras need to create deep ties within their communities, a strategy that has worked well for other arts groups.