Category: people

Tan Dun’s “The First Emperor,” Placido Domingo’s first world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, comes at a highly productive time in the legendary tenor’s career. “But Domingo, despite an almost unrivaled longevity, also knows that the end will come someday. … ‘Right now for me it’s a mystery of how long I’m going to sing,’ ” he said. ” ‘I have about three or four new operas I will still be doing. It’s exciting. But I’m 65 now; I’ll be very surprised if I will be singing opera when I’m 70. Perhaps I’ll do concerts, but I don’t think operas.’ “

“President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who flaunts his ideological fervour, has been accused of undermining Iran’s Islamic revolution after television footage appeared to show him watching a female song and dance show.”

A new play currently running in Chicago dramatizes the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and to an architecture critic, seeing the production provides a stark reminder that some of our greatest artists can also be reprehensible human beings. It’s a tough dichotomy to reconcile: “Does Wright’s art justify his life? Or do we have to set aside his skyscraper-size flaws and ignore the irony that this maker of idyllic homes seemed hell-bent on destroying the domestic tranquility that once existed in his own house?”

Jose Carreras just turned 60, and his career is as alive as ever. But it’s not exactly the same career he once had. “Questions about his retirement were rattling around as long ago as 1992. Then, he said 2000. But here we are, six years on, and he doesn’t appear to be slowing down… But there is a sense that the prodigious tenor will be remembered fondly for past operatic glories, not present triumphs.”

The first woman to win the Turner Prize seems singularly unimpressed by that fact. In fact, Tomma Abts seems to regard her entire underexposed career as something of a personal experiment in success and failure. “Abts has never had formal training in fine art and hasn’t taken a painting lesson in her life… She has always painted for herself, on the side, and the fact that it has ended in glory is something she finds quite amazing.”

Mike Malone, the choreographer, director and teacher who died Monday at age 63, was a stalwart of the Washington theater community for nearly 40 years. He believed in building institutions where the arts would be an avenue for creativity for young people, and enjoyment for all.

Orhan Pamuk, on the eve of getting his Nobel Prize for literature, says he’s not interested in the larger cultural connections some want to impose on his work. Pamuk, author of “My Name is Red”, “Snow” and half-a-dozen other novels said he wanted to be considered above all as a writer and not as a bridge between Muslim and Western cultures. “Bridge builder? I don’t like it. I am not writing fiction to explain civilization. This is not my urge.”

“Luciano Pavarotti, battling pancreatic cancer, recently completed medical treatment and is looking forward to resuming his concert tour next year, but won’t attend a ceremony this week to receive an award, his manager said Tuesday. … The occasion would have been his first public appearance since undergoing surgery over the summer.”

“United States Artists, a new nonprofit organization that makes grants directly to artists, made its first awards yesterday, distributing $2.7 million in unrestricted grants to artists working in fields ranging from architecture and design to the visual arts. Among the 50 artists receiving $50,000 were Chris Ware, a young cartoonist from Illinois; Basil Twist, a puppeteer in New York; and Anna Brown Ehlers of Alaska, who weaves blankets in the tradition of her Northern Tlingit family.” (third item)

“Robert Volpe, a painter with a flowing mustache who gained street smarts chasing drug smugglers as a police officer and then put those skills to use as the New York City Police Department’s one-man art-theft squad in the 1970s, died on Nov. 28 at his home on Staten Island. … Mr. Volpe essentially created his detective’s job after computer analyses pinpointed art theft as a growing problem. Asked to make a survey, he came back with actual arrests instead of a report — underlining the need for a special effort. He became that effort, making the New York Police Department the nation’s only one with a separate bureau for art crime.”