Category: people

Richard Dreyfus finally speaks out about why Mel Brooks replaced him before the London production of The Producers opened last year. “Brooks has told Playbill magazine that he always had Dreyfuss in mind for Bialystock, calling the actor a “brilliant artist” and a “nervous wreck”. But Dreyfuss soon discovered that doing a musical was like ascending to the pearly gates and being banished to the hellfires at the same time.”

“[Last night], for the 56th year, a man stole into a locked graveyard early on Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday and placed three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the writer’s grave… No one knows the identity of the so-called ‘Poe Toaster.’ The visit was first documented in 1949, a century after Poe’s death. This year, the visitor arrived at 1:10 a.m. in a heavy coat and obscured his face with a black pullover.” Dozens of spectators traditionally gather to watch the anonymous dropoff, and the current toaster is believed to be at least the second man to play the role.

“Salvatore Licitra is one of several looking to fill the voids left by two of the Three Tenors, and he’s making it look easy. Though he’s still establishing himself in major opera companies, he’s already on his first recital tour. His commitments to the big opera companies of the world now go through 2009. Besides being one of the world’s most promising singers, he’s probably the most fun. He hasn’t been famous very long – for that matter, he hasn’t been singing all that long – and as hard as he tries, his lips stay only partly buttoned.”

One of London’s most daring and admired theatrical directors is taking a hard right career turn, preparing to stage a major choral work by Michael Tippett which the composer never intended to be performed. And while Jonathan Kent may be better known for his accomplishents in non-musical theatre, his unusual body of work seems to point naturally in the direction of opera’s searing melodrama and rhythmic symmetries. In fact, it’s worth asking what took him so long to make the leap.

“When Tavis Smiley walked away from his National Public Radio show last month, he did not go quietly. In a series of interviews, he cast aspersions on his former employer, telling Time: ‘It is ironic that a Republican president has an administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media-elite network.'” But NPR claims that the real reason Smiley declined to return to its air was a disagreement over salary and creative control. Smiley isn’t exactly denying the charge, but claims that the network’s unwillingness to meet his demands showed a lack of respect, and implies that race was a factor.

“Legendary Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles has died in hospital in Barcelona aged 81, her family has said. The singer had been admitted to the city’s Teknon clinic on New Year’s Eve with a bronchial infection. The singer, who was renowned as one of 20th Century’s finest sopranos, retired from the stage in 1979 but continued giving recitals into her 70s.”

Tampa has an art czar. Officially, he’s the city’s Manager of Creative Services, his name is Paul Wilborn, and he makes $90,000 per year, a figure which everyone in the city’s moneyed classes seems to know. Wilborn’s salary is of interest because many observers have had a very difficult time figuring out exactly what it is that he does for the money. “Here’s what he doesn’t do: Raise funds. Distribute grants… His days are filled with meetings, which he attends on behalf of the mayor… His job – albeit unofficially – is also hobnobbing.”

Philip Glass has never been what you’d call a populist composer, but neither could the majority of his work be accurately assessed as “minimalist,” a label with which Glass has been tagged throughout his career. Now, on the eve of the premiere of his newest symphony, the composer finds himself embracing a variety of cultural and musical influences that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago.

For most of his career, Thom Mayne has been known as the architect whose work nearly everyone admired, but with whom almost no one wanted to work, due to his fiery temper and insistence on having his way in all matters of creative and artistic decision-making. And yet, Mayne has risen in recent years to become one of architecture’s most in-demand names, and even more surprisingly, he appears to be the go-to guy when a building needs to be designed for that most inflexible and creativity-stifling of all bureaucratic institutions, the U.S. government.

The San Francisco Symphony’s charismatic and ever-youthful music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, turned 60 this weekend, incredible as it may seem, and used the occasion to mount a huge onstage party at Davies Symphony Hall. “Like a kid facing a coffee table stacked with big, glittery presents, Thomas raced through the evening’s program, eagerly unwrapping each musical offering… Even among conductors, a famously long-lived and resilient breed, Thomas has always had a preternaturally youthful and even boyish streak. Now, at 60, he seems to be combining that tireless energy and enthusiasm with the ever- deepening mastery that comes with age.”