“The New Israeli Opera Tel Aviv will participate in the controversial staging of Beethoven’s prison-based opera “Fidelio” at the site of Buchenwald concentration camp, German organisers of the production announced on Tuesday. The controversial production is the brainchild of Giancarlo del Monaco, guest artistic director of the new Erfurt Opera House.”
Tag: 01.12.05
Designing A Headquarters For Architects
Here’s an intimidating project – designing the headquarters for an institution devoted to contemporary architecture. London’s Architecture Foundation will be the city’s first completely new cultural building in 27 years. From the beginning, the group “was determined that the competition should be as open as possible, not only to well-known names but also to those who had never built. An initial list of 208 entrants from as far afield as Mexico, Japan and Lithuania was reduced to the shortlist of eight, half of whom are based in London, half abroad, but none of whom had built a new building in London. All were paid to produce a design.”
Author Sues Da Vinci Code Author For Plagiarism
Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown is being sued, accused of plagiarism in his best-selling book. “Author Lewis Perdue has brought the copyright action at a court in New York, claiming Brown lifted plot material from two of his books – The Da Vinci Legacy and Daughter of God – and used it in The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. But Brown is already suing Perdue for making the plagiarism accusations.”
Charismatic Director Steps Down In Minneapolis
Evan Maurer is stepping down as director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. “A burly former rugby player with a doctorate in Renaissance and modern art, Maurer has been for years the welcoming face of an institution that was once regarded as a venerable but stuffy cultural dowager. In his heyday, Maurer seemed to be everywhere, serving on civic art committees, showing up at other museum galas, giving impromptu tours of the institute’s collection and even helping kids into the new strollers the museum provides for tots.”
Manchester On Spikes
Britain’s tallest sculpture has been errected. It’s in Manchester and rises 180 feet. It’s a starburst of spikes “designed by Thomas Heatherwick and took 20 months to put together from 180 tapered steel spikes, connected 22 metres above the ground. To keep it anchored it has foundations weighing 750 tonnes, including a 400-square-metre reinforced concrete slab. The sculpture itself weighs 300 tonnes and leans at an angle of 30 degrees – 10 times more than the leaning tower of Pisa.”
Needed: A New Internet Strategy For Movies
The director of Blockbuster Video in the UK says it’s time to get serious about a movie strategy for the internet. Films should be released simultaneously in all countires, he says. He also said that “film studios should follow the lead of the music industry and look at ways of releasing films on the internet where they can be downloaded legitimately. He called for downloads, DVDs and VHS to be made available at the same time films are released in the cinema.”
Rattle Weathers Criticism
Simon Rattle is getting some of the first criticism of his career. “At 50, Rattle becomes a senior statesman, an establishment figure. He risks entering the kind of self-protective custody that turned Karajan from a powerfully engaged maestro into a misery on Parnassus, watching the world drift away from his concept and his grasp. Rattle has detached himself from his country without fully mastering German language or culture. He is perilously adrift from the way others are starting to perceive him. He may not enjoy reading bad reviews, but unless he gets to grips with shifting perceptions he will wind up in the ivory tower he has always struggled to escape. At 50, and on top of the world, Simon Rattle still has all to prove.”
Terfel Mimes Wotan At Covent Garden
Baritone Bryn Terfel loses his voices only hours before a Covent Garden performance of Das Rheingold. “The Royal Opera House was involved in a frantic dash to find a replacement, who stood in the orchestra pit to supply Terfel’s “voice”.
A Find: Leonardo’s Studio
“Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence.”
Painting – In… Or Out?
So some are prepared to declare that painting is back in. “An art form commonly reported to be on its last legs is about to skip jauntily back into the aesthetic arena. The tortoise of tradition catches up with the hare of technology. The old-fashioned canvas overtakes newfangled conceptualism. Or does it? I would not start peeling the champagne foil yet.”