Category: people

“The influence of James Levine on the classical music scene” – he is the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony – “became clear on Tuesday when his representatives said he would undergo an operation to repair a herniated disk in the next few days and would miss at least three weeks of performances.”

“[Lucy] Vodden was a classmate of John Lennon’s son, Julian, at a nursery in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1966 when he drew a picture of her, surrounded it with stars and took it home to show his parents. The four-year-old showed it to his father and explained: ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds’.”

Michael H. Dunn, “a lifelong bachelor and a low-level member of the museum,” is remembered in his hometown “as a convivial, gregarious fellow.” No one saw his MoMA gift coming.

“Along with his wife and business partner, Doris Fisher, he became a philanthropist and a major political donor, helped keep the Giants in San Francisco and amassed one of the world’s great collections of modern art.”

“Sotheby’s is to auction the most important series of Byron letters to come to the market in more than 30 years, some of them unpublished. They were purchased by a former prime minister, the Earl of Rosebery, in 1885 and have remained with the family ever since.” They contain just the sort of gossipy goodies you’d expect.

“He emerged as a dance writer in the 1950s; more than 50 years later he was still at work in the dance field,” as editor of the magazine Ballet Review. Perhaps more importantly, ” as a knowledgeable cultural attaché in American embassies, he furthered the careers of many famous dance figures, notably George Balanchine and Martha Graham.”

The filmmaker was detained for possible extradition to the U.S. upon his arrival at Zurich’s airport. He was traveling to the city to accept a lifetime achievement award from the organizers of the Zurich Film Festival.

“The new director general of Unesco is Bulgarian diplomat Irina Bokova. Bokova, 57, who is currently the Bulgarian ambassador to France, emerged as the sole opponent to Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, 71, after three rounds of voting saw the other seven candidates withdrawn or eliminated.”

The New York Philharmonic’s new, 42-year-old music director “radiates a youthful vigor, an almost boyish sense of the casual, that is meant to draw a bright line separating the future of the august institution from its European-influenced and somewhat stuffy recent past. So, too, does his suite.”

“She was a co-founder of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. She established the New England Bach Festival, which offered tremendous performances of Bach’s masterpieces for 35 years. She created a vibrant musical community of both amateurs and professionals in rural Vermont. … She should be celebrated more.”