Category: people

During the last 20 years Mr. Kaiser has made a minor art form of turning around troubled ballet and opera companies, including American Ballet Theater, the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London. His latest accomplishment – resurrecting Dance Theatre of Harlem. “Within five or six weeks, Mr. Kaiser helped the company retire its debts, find a new executive director, expand its board and begin facing the future. ‘I needed to show troubled organizations around the country that you can fix your problems. I take very little credit for the actual implementation. They’ve done it’.”

Herbert Axelrod, the New Jersey businessman famous for selling a collection of rare violins to the New Jersey Symphony, “pleaded guilty to a federal tax fraud count yesterday in a deal that spares the elderly millionaire from the threat of prosecution on a panoply of other dubious acts… The count, aiding and abetting the filing of a false tax return, carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison, but prosecutors have agreed to seek a term of 12 to 18 months.”

Jeremy Deller may be the artist of the hour with his Turner Prize win. But he’s ready to be rid of the attention and get back to work. “True, he may be £25,000 richer, he may have had the opportunity to make his parents proud and to thank friends and collaborators live on Channel 4, but the evening was not without its moments, or even hours, of torture.”

Eighty-three-year-old Giuseppe Di Stefano is still unconscious in hospital in Kenya, but doctors are hoping for his recovery after the tenor was attacked near his home last week. “Unidentified assailants attacked Di Stefano and his wife last Tuesday at their villa in Diani, located about 435 kilometres southeast of Nairobi. He was struck in the head as he tried to defend his wife from the attackers, who were attempting to steal her necklace.”

“It’s the magic, though, of the annual Kennedy Center Honors that a two-hour tribute to a handful of spectacularly gifted performing artists always draws a marvelous cross-section of talent from all walks of (super-famous) life. And so it was that the opera diva and he of the explicit lyrics and self-created bad-boy persona both took their turns onstage at the Kennedy Center Opera House last night.”

Italian tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, 83, is being treated in intensive care in Kenya after being attacked by unknown assailants last week.

Leila Getz is that rarest of classical concert promoters – a true lover of music whose practiced eye for spotting developing talent frequently trumps the conventional wisdom that audiences only want big names. Audiences in Getz’s home city of Vancouver have learned to trust her judgment over the years, so when she replaces a cancelled star with a 12-year-old prodigy, very few ticketholders come looking for refunds.

Antonio Pappano has always been viewed as something of a wunderkind among conductors, but lately, as music director of London’s premiere opera company, the challenges have been coming fast and furious. So far, Pappano has passed every test, impressing musicians and critics alike with his “striking candour and clarity about his comments”, but the greatest challenge of his career may be just around the corner, as Covent Garden prepares for its upcoming Ring cycle.

“Lilian Alicia Marks, who died on December 1 on the night after her 94th birthday, made her debut as a dancer at the age of 10… Markova was one of the greatest ballerinas of the 20th century. She had a delicate physique, a tungsten technique masked by a gentle appearance, and a flawless musical understanding. Everything she did had to appear effortless, which she achieved by an implacable will and total concentration.”

In Chicago, they’re wondering who might fill the shoes of Ed Paschke – for decades the Chicago art scene’s most visible and charismatic icon – who recently died. “In their view, Paschke’s unique track record of international stature, tireless civic involvement, generous mentorship of the young and commitment to Chicago is unlikely to be approached, much less duplicated, by anyone now on the scene.”