Category: people

“He ushered in contemporary drama, drew up the blueprint for a national UK company, and wrote gripping, complex plays, yet Harley Granville-Barker is little known today… Granville-Barker demanded that the text must come first, and that the director, designer and actors must serve it with clarity, lucidity, realism and grace. He established the premise of modern theatre design by showing that scenery had to be expressive and avoid being decorative or literal.”

Young British violinist Nicola Benadetti, who recently lashed out at the UK press for veiled and not-so-veiled suggestions that her stardom was based more on looks than talent, has achieved some validation with her nomination for two major Classical Brit awards. “Her debut recording is in the running for Album of the Year, and she is one of three contenders for the Young British Classical Performer award.”

A new set of recordings of opera singer Olive Middleton have just become available. Who’s that, you say? Some great legend of the stage of whom I was previously unaware? Well, not exactly: “Middleton’s singing goes beyond parody. And it goes well beyond good singing. It’s just plain awful.” But her celebrity during her heyday in Britain was such that no one seemed to mind that her voice deteriorated so early in her long career. And besides, “all opera hovers on the border of parody. No other performing art — except possibly dance — so exposes its practitioners to ridicule. Part of the thrill of opera is pitting sheer volume against human limitations, the constant awareness of the possibility of failure.”

For many on the left, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. For many on the right, she’s the next shining star of the Republican Party. But there is another side to Rice which she appears to take every bit as seriously as her work in government. “Ms. Rice is an accomplished pianist… Until college she intended to pursue music professionally. Now 51, she plays as often as every other week with [a standing chamber ensemble made up of Washington lawyers with a passion for music.] Until now it was a realm of her very public life that she kept private.”

“For centuries, historians have portrayed Mozart as poor, but new documents suggest the composer was not nearly as hard-up for cash as many have believed. Scholars who combed through Austrian archives for an exhibition opening Tuesday on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s later years in Vienna found evidence that he was solidly upper crust and lived the good life… Mozart’s main occupation in Vienna was teaching piano to aristocrats — a lucrative job that helped support his extravagant lifestyle. Yet Mozart earned a reputation for money-grubbing, and evidence abounds that he squandered much of his wealth.”

Doris W. Jones, who found the doors shut to her when she tried to learn ballet as an aspiring black dancer but who went on to open them for succeeding generations, running ballet schools for black youngsters and training a roster of notable dancers and choreographers, died on March 21 in Washington. She was 92.

There are times when it seems that conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim must be the busiest speechmaker in the classical music world. “This week, Barenboim puts down his baton and some of his worries to deliver the first in his series of the BBC’s annual Reith Lectures. He will argue that music lies at the heart of our understanding of what it is to be human and his theme will encompass how music provides a way of making sense of the world: of politics, of history and of our future.”

Mstislav Rostropovich has told a German magazine that he will no longer perform in public on the cello. The renowned cellist/conductor, now aged 79, was quoted as saying that a Penderecki premiere he played in Vienna this January would be his last performance. “Rostropovich said that he would continue to maintain an active schedule as a conductor, noting that he was completely booked for the next two years.”

Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost says he wrote 25,000 lines of poetry while he was a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. Now that he’s out, he wants it returned…