“He was a powerfully individual composer, an amazingly talented conductor” – Balanchine thought he was the best ballet conductor out there – “and one of the most quotable critics ever to put pen to paper.” He was also Margot Fonteyn’s lover, and he was brilliant at dirty limericks. “[He] complicated posterity’s job by deliberately choosing not to specialize in a single line of creative endeavor.”
Tag: 03.27.14
So We Borrowed This Ancient Crimean Art – Where Are We Supposed to Return It?
“Scythian gold and other rare artefacts from Crimea on loan to an Amsterdam museum are in legal limbo after Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. … The show features ancient jewellery and armour on loan from five Ukrainian museums, including four in the Crimea.”
Stolen Renoir Finally Makes It Home After 62 Years
“It has the makings of a great mystery: Artwork stolen from a prominent museum, plus the FBI, a beautiful woman and an intrepid reporter. But this isn’t fiction, it’s a strange, true tale of how a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir has now safely returned home to Baltimore.”
Russia’s Top Theater Festival Keeps Growing and Growing
The Golden Mask festival began in 1995 as Moscow’s equivalent of the Tonys. Now theater companies (and opera and dance troupes) from throughout Russia spend three weeks in March and April in the capital competing for awards in 34 categories – and that’s not even counting fringe fests and tours.
Why Does It Matter That Heidegger Was Anti-Semitic?
“Why do these thinkers’ personal lives and ideological compromises seem unusually relevant to their work, beyond the usual scandal-sheet Schadenfreude? It may have something to do with their distinctive views regarding the relevance (or, rather, irrelevance) of character and personality to the objects of their study.”
At 81, Playwright Athol Fugard Looks Back On Aging And Apartheid
“I think it is under the pressure of desperation that extraordinary things can happen in a human life. And if ever there was a country oversupplied with desperation, it was South Africa in that time.” (audio)
BBC, Going All-In on the Arts, Cancels Long-Running Arts Show
“The BBC has axed long-running culture programme The Review Show, in the week director general Tony Hall promised the corporation’s ‘strongest commitment to the arts in a generation’.”
China’s Latest Urban Problem: Flocks of Dancing Old Folks
Retired city folks are cranking their boom boxes and boogie-ing in parks, squares and parking lots – and driving the neighbors nuts. The elders themselves – tens of millions of them – say it’s good for their physical and mental well-being (and digestion, too).
Rumsfeld’s Knowns and Unknowns: The Intellectual History of a Quip
“I recall many people viewing it as handwaving nonsense meant to cover over reality. It was a laughingstock … but wasn’t [it] a brilliantly pithy piece of popular epistemology? Decoupled from its context, it seemed smart … and I’d wager most people couldn’t tell you what Rumsfeld was talking about when he said it.”
Who Else Could Play Walter White, LBJ, And Jerry Seinfeld’s Dentist?
Bryan Cranston spends 45 minutes with Terry Gross. (audio)