Category: today’s top story

Artistic director Edward Villella: “It’s the biggest success the company has had in 25 years. We are the talk of Paris. People are clamoring for tickets. They stop me in buses and restaurants. They have grabbed me in the aisles and told me they’ve never seen dancing like this.”

“The dancers of the Joffrey Ballet and the company’s management have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract. The dancers are expected to officially ratify the new deal next week, and the company’s fall season … will be presented at the Auditorium Theatre in October as planned.”

“It bears mentioning that a child who never learns to write cursive will also never learn to read cursive. The neglected art has already created a generation of schoolchildren, from third graders on up through high schoolers, to whom cursive is a foreign alphabet.”

“The leading Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has accepted a teaching post at a Berlin university, a month after he was released from detention. But it is uncertain whether the Chinese authorities will allow him to leave because he remains under tight surveillance.”

“The discord between the [bankrupt] Louisville Orchestra and its musicians reached new levels Monday as the players said they would unanimously reject a blunt offer from the orchestra’s management to perform on a ‘per-service model’ or risk losing their positions.”

He was “a world choreographer of chic and erotic theatricality who blew away the French classical ideal in a roar of liberated sensual heat … and his roles for his exquisite wife, Zizi Jeanmaire, repositioned ballet drama upon the femme fatale rather than the virgin.”

“Rather than seeking to abrogate the current contract and impose a new one in bankruptcy court, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association offered musicians an extension on a concessionary contract through Nov. 13.” Acceptance by the musicians means that the orchestra’s summer tours can proceed without fear of a strike.

“The Codex Calixtinus, a priceless 12th century illuminated manuscript, has vanished from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. … As well as a major source of historical information, the codex is considered one of the first guidebooks to the Way of St James pilgrimage” and is one of Europe’s most important original sources of medieval music.

“We have been able to keep this project on track thanks to intense negotiations behind the scenes with all parties.”

“Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte at John Jay College. Verdi’s Traviata at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A Telemann opera at the Museo del Barrio. … [Plus] staged performances of two works in February: a piece of 19th-century standard repertory and a 21st-century opera, presumably the previously announced Prima Donna by the singer and songwriter Rufus Wainwright.”