Category: people

“Opera singer Russell Watson is in a critical condition after undergoing emergency surgery to treat a bleeding brain tumour.”

“Tragic opera is too simple a description of the crazy imbroglio that has developed since the mighty tenor died of pancreatic cancer on September 6 in his home town of Modena, in northern Italy. A synopsis of the plot might help to illuminate the story. Then again, it might not. That is how it is with this particular Italian libretto.”

The legacy of legendary folk artist Howard Finster resides mainly on a decaying, overgrown lot in Georgia. “Even as the house is being rebuilt with new walls, floors, fresh paint and a new deck, the World’s Folk Art Church, a chapel with a 16-sided cupola that is the gardens’ signature structure, slumps precariously, and one of its balconies has collapsed.” Now a public fight has broken out between those charged with preserving Finster’s legacy, and those who feel the job is being botched.

Norman Lebrecht thinks so. “Korngold, 110 next month and 50 years dead, richly deserves to be welcomed back to the concert hall. But he deserves even more to be recognised as a pioneer of an allied art, an art that now cries out for a new Korngold to rejuvenate its methodology. The time has come to erase the line between movie and concert music, to encourage the likes of John Adams, Thomas Ades and Mark Anton Turnage to try their hand at lifting film tracks out of the Korngold groove and into 21st century modalities.”

“The notion that celebrities could even confer the right to cash in on their personas post mortem was in dispute until 1984, when the California Legislature passed a bill that allowed stars to leave such rights in their wills. In May of this year, however, two federal courts interpreted the bill with regard to the [Marilyn Monroe] estate in a way that excluded her and other celebrities who died before the Legislature’s action… With some nudging from the Screen Actors Guild and the Monroe estate, the California Senate drafted clarifying legislation. Senate Bill No. 771, affectionately known as the Dead Celebrities Bill, passed without objection.”

Author Dave Eggers was presented with a Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities for his work establishing a chain of non-profit literacy centers this week in Pittsburgh. “At 37, Eggers is the youngest winner of a Heinz Award, which comes with a $250,000 prize. He is giving the money directly to the [literacy] centers.”

Fresh off her Nobel Prize win, 88-year-old author Doris Lessing is courting controversy, telling a Spanish newspaper that the 9/11 attacks were not as awful as Americans claim, and were dwarfed by the IRA’s campaign of terrorist attacks in England. Lessing also said that Americans are “a very naive people, or they pretend to be,” and called President Bush a “world calamity.”

“Eastern Promises, a Russian mob story set in contemporary London, is far removed from the films that earned [director David Cronenberg] the nickname ‘king of venereal horror.” But no one need worry that the Canadian is softening with age. “I’ve always been dealing with transgressive groups, so in that sense, it’s not unusual for me, as I’m interested in marginal characters outside society.”

“Stage director Willy Decker is to be the new director of the Ruhr Triennale starting in 2009. He succeeds Jürgen Flimm, now director of the Salzburg Festival… Founded in 2002 by Gerard Mortier, the Ruhr Triennale offers adventurous music, theater and dance programs in unused industrial spaces in the Ruhr Valley.”

When tenor Ben Heppner took ill midway through an oratorio in Vancouver over the weekend, the entire Vancouver Symphony performance was in jeopardy. But incredibly, another well-known tenor, Peter Butterfield, was in the audience, and was immediately conscripted to finish the show, even though he hadn’t sung the piece in 20 years.