Category: people

“Variously known as “the Ceausescus”, “Bonnie and Clyde” and, in her case, “the Draculette” (backstage nicknames can be cruel), their lives came to exemplify the kind of conduct you might casually think goes with the territory of opera stardom: tantrums, cancellations, stormings off, general hysteria.”

‘To listen to Bussell – one of the best ballerinas Britain has ever produced – one would barely recognise her as an international star. By her own modest account, her early years of training were a “disaster”, her career “so fortunate”, and her svelte figure now “horribly” deteriorated.’

“The methods he developed at UC Irvine, where he began teaching in 1981, joining the faculty full time in 1985, made him something of an iconoclast. He criticized, and offered an alternative to, a classic approach for teaching actors to speak properly that was propounded by Edith Skinner, a legendary professor at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the Juilliard School in New York City.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Rocky and most of its sequels are great movies. But the fact that a fictional character is perceived as our only claim to fame is annoying, and worse, a source of ridicule.”

“How many members of the Monty Python comedy troupe have there been? Think carefully before you respond, because an incorrect answer could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Soprano Angela Gheorghiu is alleging that tenor Roberto Alagna, whom she recenty divorced, hit her – sometimes in front of other family members – during their 17 years of marriage.

“At 6 feet 5, with hands that easily spanned the piano keyboard well beyond octaves, Smith was an impressive sight on stage. Playing with a versatility comparable to that of Oscar Peterson and a harmonic richness similar to the work of Bill Evans, he was both a brilliant soloist and an accompanist who was highly praised by the many singers with whom he performed.”

Authors Jill Lepore and Judith Thurman talk with The New Yorker‘s Sasha Weiss about Jane Franklin – who she was, what she thought, and what she gave up.

“With matinee-idol looks and solid classical training, Mr. Miskovitch was highly visible amid the creative effervescence that marked French choreography shortly after World War II. Young and unknown choreographers like Roland Petit, Maurice Béjart and Janine Charrat all took advantage of his magnetic presence in their early works.”

50 years ago this past April, Martin Luther King wrote, and The Atlantic published, what one scholar has called “twentieth-century America’s most quoted and inspiring manifesto in defense of humane civil disobedience.” In honor of the anniversary, Smith performed portions of the letter at this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival.