ENO’s Great Irish Dream

“It is easy, when meeting Seán Doran, to grasp why English National Opera sees him as its potential saviour. He only has to open his mouth and you feel he has the gift of the blarney. When you listen to him expounding, in a lilting Irish accent, his visions for the future of opera, the least you can do is nod and agree. That’s exactly what the embattled ENO board did last year when it appointed Doran as artistic director and chief executive. The question now is whether he can turn vision into reality.” Lately, the ENO has been forced to accept one delay after another in the reopening of its home at the London Coliseum, but Doran remains upbeat about the future.

Melbourne Festival Takes A Hit

The Australian state of Victoria has slashed its contribution to the Melbourne Festival by AUS$1 million. The festival receives a recurring grant of $2.5 million, but that has been supplemented in recent years with a “top-up” grant which the festival expected to amount to $4 million this year. Instead, the top-up grant will be $3 million. The cut was not unexpected, and the festival has been negotiating with the government for some time over budget issues.

Because, As We All Know, The F-Word Causes Cancer

The U.S. Congress is strongly urging American broadcasters to take the initiative in scaling back the amount of sexual innuendo and coarse language on the nation’s TV screens. The FCC may be on the verge of issuing stricter rules regarding on-air obscenity, and more than two dozen congressmen are sponsoring legislation to increase the maximum fine for obscenity violations tenfold. The renewed push to clean up TV comes in the wake of a flap over the FCC’s decision not to punish NBC for allowing a curse word uttered by a rock star to air during a live awards show broadcast.

Location, Location, Loca… Wait, Weren’t We Just Here?

New York being the trendy city that it is, it can be all a gallery owner can do to stay on the cutting edge of such important matters as what neighborhood your business needs to be in in order to attract your better customers. Of late, the hot gallery location has been the West Chelsea neighborhood, but now, there appears to be a retro movement afoot, with several prominent art dealers moving their galleries back to the old “traditional” art neighborhoods of Midtown and the Upper East Side.

For When Your Art Has Be There Right Now

An East London gallery is soliciting art from graphic artists, designers, and filmmakers for a new exhibition. Anyone who responds to the request will likely have his/her work displayed, but only if the art is sent, as requested, by e-mail or CD. Not surprisingly, a computer company is sponsoring the project, and recently installed thousands of dollars of printers, projectors, and other equipment there. “When a piece of art is received, via e-mail or on a CD, it is printed out on huge machines, mounted, then hung on the wall for all to enjoy.”

Um, Okay, So… Three Stars Out Of Four, Then?

New York City Ballet is, like every other dance company on Earth, marking George Balanchine’s centenary with a series of special performances highlighting the master’s work. Unfortunately, says Robert Gottlieb, City Ballet chose to cast a decidedly washed-up ballerina in two of Balanchine’s most beloved roles, and to allow “echt Broadway” star Susan Stroman to stumble through “a two-and-a-half-hour piece with barely a step in it beyond the most rudimentary. There’s so little dance content, you can hardly even call it pastiche; it’s a show, it’s a hit, but it’s not a ballet.”

Why Johnny Can’t Choose

People want more choices in life, or so they say. But a new study suggests that people presented with more than a few choices have a much harder time making decisions, and may choose to make no decision at all, rather than cope with the stress of multiple options. So perhaps it follows that, when it comes to matters of public policy, our government needs to stop giving us so many options, and make a few well-reasoned decisions on our behalf. So said a psychology professor in a New York Times op-ed last week. But Ronald Bailey isn’t buying that argument: “One suspects that his unspoken converse is that sound public policy consists of the government restricting options and forcing Americans to do what people like Professor Schwartz think is good for them.”

When Art Attacks (Or Is Attacked)

The Swedish prime minister’s office has been deluged with thousands of e-mails protesting a Stockholm art exhibition which includes an installation piece the e-mailers view as anti-Semitic. The work, which features a photo of a Palestinian suicide bomber floating in a sea of blood, was vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden last week, and ever since, Israeli organizations around the world have been blasting the Swedish government for allowing the exhibition to proceed. The latest group to join the fray is the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization which has been urging its supporters to send the protest e-mails.

100 Years of Trumpets, Trills, and Turmoil

The London Symphony Orchestra turns 100 this year, a good long run for an ensemble with the LSO’s lively history. “The orchestra was founded as Britain’s first self-ruling symphonic institution, and its players, who choose their principal conductor and guest conductors, have been notorious for a snarkiness that has caused more than one eminent maestro to turn tail and run.” The LSO has always been ranked among the top orchestras in the world, but Charles Michener believes that they never truly ascended to greatness until just recently, when they chose Sir Colin Davis as their latest principal conductor.

Handicapping The Field

“To get a sense of how The New York Times plans to overhaul its Book Review, just consider the candidates to succeed Charles (Chip) McGrath as the section’s next editor. All have strong nonfiction or current-affairs backgrounds — in line with the newsier direction the Times’ top editors say they want to take the section when they make the much-anticipated appointment as soon as February.”