Category: people

John Karls is an audience member of the most devoted sort. Not only does he regularly shell out upwards of $200 for the most expensive seats in the house at countless ballet and opera performances, he scrapes up a few extra dollars every night for a top-shelf bouquet, which he will then heave in the direction of whichever performer pleases him most. “He has attended upward of 2,500 performances and tossed some 750 bouquets in a career spanning more than half a century… Mr. Karls uses a two-handed toss not unlike that of a hammer thrower… The real issue is wind resistance: the cellophane wrap can cause significant drag and can make a bouquet do what Mr. Karls calls a ‘dying duck’ over the orchestra pit.”

When the erotic novel The Story of O was first published under a pseudonym a half-century ago, it scandalized French, British, and American society alike with its explicit but beautifully written descriptions of bondage and sexual violence. The identity of its author was much speculated upon, and many were convinced that it had to be a man. It wasn’t, and the woman behind the book that revolutionized erotic literature wrote it for her lover on a dare, never intending for it to see the light of day.

Since being forced off the mike as host of Morning Edition several months ago, Bob Edwards has kept a relatively low profile as he travels the country promoting his latest book. But as the book tour draws to a close, Edwards admits that he has been listening to job offers from around the country, and while he declines to say if he plans to leave National Public Radio entirely, it seems a very real possibility.

Linda Ronstadt apparently isn’t bothered by having her encore drowned out by shouting and booing audience members. A week after being booted out of a Las Vegas casino hotel for the awful crime of dedicating her last song of the evening to controversial filmmaker Michael Moore, Ronstadt is continuing to reference Moore as “a great American patriot” at the end of her performances, causing walkouts, a mix of boos and cheers, and the occasional cry of “Traitor!” wherever she goes.

Famed conductor Sir Simon Rattle is making headlines of a sort usually reserved for pop musicians. This week, Rattle admitted that he has separated from his wife of eight years, and is living with the famous Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, who is 18 years his junior. The affair is causing quite a stir in Europe’s normally staid classical music scene…

A San Francisco man’s “long-estranged mother died recently, leaving him $187,000 — and the first thing Don did when he got the money was cut a $10,000 check to the art gallery he has sat in front of for two years, panhandling and begging for free food. He got drunk to celebrate, then stumbled into the door of the Blue Room Gallery, walked straight up to owner Paul Mahder and handed him the check.”

Jim Fusilli thinks Linda Ronstadt should stick to singing rather than politics. “It’s too early to tell whether this controversy will re-energize Ms. Ronstadt’s career. But after seeing about a thousand rock concerts, my feeling is that rock stars who discuss politics from the stage deserve whatever criticism they get–not for speaking their minds, but for assuming they might have something to say that we need to hear from them. I figure if you’re a pop musician and you feel the need to express your politics, go try to write the next Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“Unlike some conductors, Mr. Kleiber was equally convincing in concert works and opera. A fabled perfectionist, he demanded long hours of rehearsal as his reputation grew and allowed him to obtain such concessions. But he made all that work pay off in performances that blended exactitude with impassioned spontaneity.”

“The discoveries about Singer inflame persistent arguments about his work. Did his highly accessible, highly sexual, idiosyncratic mix of Eastern European folklore – full of supernatural demons and dybbuks and frenzied primitive emotion – really deserve the Nobel Prize? Did the Swedish Academy slight better Yiddish writers?”

“An undoubted perfectionist, Kleiber agreed to appear only when and where he felt like it. He was prone to cancel his appearances in a quite cavalier fashion, and refused to be tied to any one orchestra or opera house. No wonder, when he did appear, the man whom the New York Times once described as “the most venerated conductor since Arturo Toscanini” commanded attention and sold-out houses.”