Category: people

“Peter B. Lane, president and chief executive officer of the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, will leave the semi-outdoor Fairmount Park facility in mid-September after a decade of shoring up the center’s financial stability and revamping its public identity. The announcement, made yesterday by the Mann Center, said Lane will become CEO of Bethel Woods Center for the Arts at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Upstate New York.”

“The vanity of the late Philip Larkin has come to light in a previously unseen letter to a photographer. The witty correspondence with Fay Godwin from 1985 reveals how the womanising poet struggled to control his public image as he grew older. Half joking, half in deadly earnest, Larkin tries to prevent photographs being used that expose his baldness or girth. ‘I now have three conditions that photographers must promise to observe in what they print,’ he writes to Godwin….”

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff,” Sir Elton says. “Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end.”

“Nearly all the obituaries I’ve read take for granted Mr. Bergman’s stature as one of the uncontestable major figures in cinema…. Sometimes, though, the best indication of an artist’s continuing vitality is simply what of his work remains visible and is still talked about. The hard fact is, Mr. Bergman isn’t being taught in film courses or debated by film buffs with the same intensity as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard. His works are seen less often in retrospectives and on DVD than those of Carl Dreyer and Robert Bresson….”

“For a good quarter century — beginning with his burst into world movie prominence in the ’50s and extending until his official “retirement” after making Fanny and Alexander in 1982 — Bergman defined serious cinema… His movies certainly launched a generation of film critics, this one included. Dozens of us have the same story of teenage revelation: of seeing a Bergman movie, usually The Seventh Seal, and saying, ‘This is what I want to study, devote my life to’.”

“The double suicide of this glamorous, well-connected and attractive couple has baffled and fixated branches of the Hollywood film community, the art world and the blogosphere. In the days since their deaths, a clearer picture has emerged of a couple bound very tightly but suspicious of outsiders and increasingly losing touch with reality.”

“She was losing her grip on reality, and Jeremy was so devoted to her that he would go along with it . . . It became impossible to ignore…”

There aren’t many classical music luminaries that could qualify as pop culture heroes these days, but tenor Placido Domingo is unquestionably one of the few. “While Luciano Pavarotti and Jose Carreras have eased into retirement, Domingo at 66 remains at his artistic peak. Since his debut in 1959, he has sung a record 128 operatic roles. Next year, he celebrates the 40th anniversary of his debuts at the Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago.”

“Charles Simic, a writer who juxtaposes dark imagery with ironic humor, is to be named the country’s 15th poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress today. Simic, 69, was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and immigrated to the United States at 16. He started writing poetry in English only a few years after learning the language and has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, as well as essay collections, translations and a memoir.”