Category: people

The Polish sculptor “came up with a visual language that was unlike that of her European colleagues, many of whom were inclined toward the Pop-inflected use of commercial imagery and, later, conceptually rigorous objects. Her formalist sculptures relied on rumpled, crumpled, and distressed surfaces that became metaphors for the effects of violence on human skin and land turned up by bombings and battles.”

She started playing Joanie when she was 12. “Over the 10-year run of ‘Happy Days,’ Joanie transformed from the young teenager who complained about being sent to her room to a major character on the show. In later seasons, Joanie’s love interest with the aspiring musician Chachi Arcola became a major story line.”

The space above the hall was a haven for artists of all stripes for many decades. “For Ms. Sargent, Carnegie Hall was as much sanctuary as studio. She moved there to distance herself from an abusive husband who drank, she said. Her starting rent for Studio 901, a well-lighted apartment with a lofted bedroom, was $188 a month.”

The Bard turns 453, and Stratford-upon-Avon is not missing out on a parade for the man.

Today, our most famous purveyors of ideas sell themselves to the wealthy much like the courtiers of the Middle Ages. Daniel Drezner notes that these ideas are therefore shaped by the “aversion” that plutocrats share toward addressing the problems we face. Inequality? Global warming? Populist nihilism? An explosion of global refugees? From a Silicon Valley perspective, Drezner notes, such things are not a failure of our system but rather “a piece of faulty code that need[s] to be hacked.” Examining data from a survey of Silicon Valley corporate founders, Drezner notes their shared belief that “there’s no inherent conflict between major groups in society (workers vs. corporations, citizens vs. government, or America vs. other nations).”

“[He] is perhaps best known for taking on the role of Siegfried in Götterdämmerung for Bayreuth’s centennial Ring cycle … He also garnered fame for being one of the few tenors to sing every single tenor role in Wagner’s Ring.”

“At a time when opera houses are more and more trying their hand at presenting musicals (the bone of contention among opera-lovers is whether this is a great thing or a betrayal of the art form), “Carousel” is one of the musicals most often cited as quasi-operatic. Indeed, the role of Nettie Fowler, which Fleming will play, was originally written for an opera singer, Christine Johnson, in 1945, and has often been sung by opera singers since — Denyce Graves, Shirley Verrett and Stephanie Blythe are among previous interpreters of the role.”

“The students laughed. Then, as if fearful that they’d overstepped some boundary, they peered down the length of the seminar table at me, as if to see how I’d react. Since I wanted to show them I was a good sport, I smiled broadly. But what I was thinking was, This is going to be a nightmare.”

She was the first Ethiopian girl to be sent abroad to study, the first woman in the country’s civil service, and the first female to sing in an Ethiopian Orthodox church service; she raced a horse and carriage around Addis Ababa and sang for Haile Selassie; she was thoroughly trained in Western classical music, but spent a decade as a barefoot nun at a hilltop convent; she fled from the Communist junta and settled in Jerusalem, where she’s spent decades creating music like no one else’s. Meet Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.

Known for an extensive discography on the Erato and EMI labels and for his posts with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Sydney Symphony, Frémaux “was the only major orchestral conductor to serve two spells as an officer in the Foreign Legion.”