Category: people

“It was the Great Train Robbery of French intellectual life: thousands of treasured documents that vanished from the Institut de France in the mid-1800s, stolen by an Italian mathematician. Among them were 72 letters by René Descartes, the founding genius of modern philosophy and analytic geometry. Now one of those purloined letters has turned up at a small private college in eastern Pennsylvania.”

“[W]hen I was a teenager and decided that I wanted to dance, I asked him if we could go, for the first time, to a ballet performance. … My father, at that moment in a cut-off sweatshirt covered with muffin crumbs, bacon grease, Flintstones Jelly and beer stains replied without dropping a beat–‘Yeah, I’d like to see something by Twyla Tharp, I understand she’s quite innovative’.”

Since the choreographer met chef Mario Batalia a decade ago, “they have become fans of each other’s work. Over a boozy dinner at Mr. Batali’s Del Posto, they talked about art and ice skating, the work of their colleagues, Michelle Obama and much more, often in language too blue for a family newspaper.”

“Saving humanity has long been her main objective, ideally through the imposition of a political programme that follows a Trotskyist understanding of dialectical materialism. … She has said that she took to heavy drinking in 1972 ‘when Ted Heath imposed statutory wage controls’. It requires a unique talent for the dramatic to flirt with alcoholism as a result of industrial legislation, if you’re an actor.”

This year’s six winners of the C$25,000 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards are singers Bryan Adams and Buffy Sainte-Marie, Quebec theatre actress and broadcaster Françoise Faucher, artist manager Walter Homburger, Quebec choreographer Edouard Lock and actor/stage director Robin Phillips. Hot young conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin received the C$25,000 National Arts Centre Award.

“‘I see maybe three or four films a year. Probably less than the average moviegoer.’ The admission seemed genuine, and one imagines that this approach accounts for how nonderivative Mr. Herzog’s films are. His movie-watching tendencies have also had some unexpected consequences.”

Burton, the director of “Alice in Wonderland,” said Nigella “Lawson’s domestic goddess routine has an eerie edge to it at times. ‘She’s really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there’s this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, “Oh, whoa, she’s like really … nuts.” I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don’t know.'”

“He is hoping to miss no more than six weeks of performances, returning for a late-March run in the title role of ‘Simon Boccanegra’ at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, said the spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer. … Mr. Domingo, 69, suffered ‘intense pain and discomfort’ while singing and conducting in Tokyo [last week], Ms. Seltzer said. “

Yep, the song is called “The Krugman Blues.”

Ramírez’s most famous work, written “just as the Second Vatican Council permitted the celebration of the Catholic Mass in the vernacular, … combined Spanish text with indigenous instruments and rhythms. Its effect is that of a reverent carnival, and it has sold millions of albums and been performed countless times across the world.”