While London’s Royal Opera House seems to have steadied itself, The English National Opera is going in the other direction. Norman Lebrecht reports that dismay greeted ENO’s choice of a new director last week. “The most dispiriting aspect of his appointment is its wilful myopia. Nothing about him inspires faith that Sean Doran will do better than any of the bathroom warblers who are lining up to try for an ENO role in Channel Four’s gimmicky Operatunity contest. The idiocy of promoting an untested candidate from a provincial Australian ensemble was amply demonstrated by the fate of Ross Stretton at the ROH.”
Tag: 02.11.03
Protesting Poets – Tradition or Knee-Jerk Reaction?
“The belief that poets are naturally rebellious and ‘progressive’ is a fairly recent one. It is equally naive to think that poetic talent confers on its bearer some special grasp of political wisdom. Just in the past hundred years, renowned poets have supported some very bad causes, including communism and fascism. Today, the literary community is overwhelmingly left of center. Is this groundswell of antiwar sentiment among poets driven by well-considered opposition to the war, or is it a knee-jerk reaction?”
Books Based On Video Games?
Better believe it. Games are big business. “Video game sales surpassed movie sales last year, with a staggering $9.4 billion take. Mario, the plucky plumber and star of an 18-year-old series of games, has brought in twice as much revenue as all five Star Wars films combined. The Sims, a digital family whom players manipulate through every stage of life, has sold nearly 20 million units. So it’s no surprise that book publishers are turning to video game novels. Yes, novels.”
Yahoo Cleared In Nazi Memorabilia Suit
“In what might end a three-year legal fight, a Paris court Tuesday threw out accusations by French human rights activists who said Yahoo should be held legally responsible for auctions that were once held on its website of Nazi paraphernalia. The court ruled that Yahoo and its former chief executive, Tim Koogle, never sought to ‘justify war crimes and crimes against humanity’ as they were accused of doing by human rights activists, including Holocaust survivors and their families.” The suit was a complicated one, since France does not allow the display or sale of racist material. At one point, a judge had ordered Yahoo to block French users from viewing or participating in auctions of Nazi material.
Cultural Council Comes Back After Disastrous 9/11
The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council lost everything on September 11—and “not just their offices in 5 WTC, the databases, the archives, the stage on the plaza. An artist in their residency program died in his studio on the 92nd floor of Tower One. Others had harrowing close calls. A tech crew was mopping the plaza stage for that night’s dance performance as debris started falling. Another artist made it safely down the steps from the 91st floor. And executive director Liz Thompson was on the last elevator out of Windows on the World.” Now they’re into a new home. “They didn’t just survive—they bounced back, stronger and more necessary than ever. Founded 30 years ago to help revitalize a moribund downtown, they face that challenge anew, but this time with a long track record of arts advocacy behind them.”
Seeing What They Say On Stage – Captioning Catches On
An increasing number of English theatres are “introducing a captioned performance in the run of their plays. The obvious beneficiaries of being able to read, and therefore ‘hear’ performances, are people with hearing loss. But the technique also helps those for whom English is not their first language, but who want to experience and enjoy English theatre – i.e., tourists.”
The Next Children’s Book Phenom?
An English woman and her daughter are being touted as the next children’s book phenomenon. “Lionboy, the tale of a boy who talks to cats, has been created by Louisa Young and her 10-year-old daughter Isabel. Publisher Puffin, the children’s arm of Penguin, has signed the pair in a ‘substantial’ three-book deal said to be ‘in the high six figures’. The amount dwarfs the £2,000 paid to J K Rowling for her first Harry Potter tale, The Philosopher’s Stone.”
Another Large Publisher Moves To Unload Unprofitable Division
McClelland & Stewart, which used to bill itself as “the Canadian Publisher,” is selling off a small but prestigious press it bought three years ago. “If no buyer can be found, the rights to its backlist of some 60 titles — as well as future projects already in the works — will revert to McClelland & Stewart and MW&R’s core employees will lose their jobs. Non-fiction (MW&R’s specialty) has been an increasingly hard sell, and the company “blames the loss of book review space in newspapers and magazines, new book-unfriendly programming by the CBC, and fewer and more tough-minded booksellers for the failure of many good non-fiction books to find their intended audience.”
Coveting A Charles Manson Poster?
A Denver production of a play about murderer Charles Manson is having a poster problem. No sooner do posters for the play go up in local businesses when they’re taken down. “The average poster life is about 48 hours, we’re finding. They’re either coming down because somebody’s offended or because they’re hanging them on their wall.”
Online Pirate DVD Factories Offering Latest Blockbusters
Movie studios are trying to shut down slick new internet sites operating out of Malaysia that are offering pirated DVD copies of all the latest Hollywood fare for $13.99 a disk. “Pirated DVDs have been available on the streets of New York and other U.S. cities as well as on the Internet for years, but Temple said Web sites attempting to mass-market bootlegs were a relatively rare and recent phenomenon.”