New Guthrie Faces Seating Headache

When Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater moves into its massive new riverfront digs this summer, it will have by far the best facilities in the Twin Cities at its disposal. It will also have fewer seats in its main theater, and for some longtime Guthrie subscribers, that’s a big problem. “Subscribers have been flooding the theater’s phone lines for the past two weeks, trying to figure out where they’ll be sitting — and why.”

Beckett Centenary Includes Some Rarities

Samuel Beckett would have been 100 this year, and in Dublin, the celebrated Gate Theatre is commemorating the occasion by staging a full season of Beckett, including a play originally written for television, but never before seen on stage. “[The Beckett Estate] has intervened to stop certain productions that broke with Beckett’s exceptionally precise instructions, but the Gate has co-operated with it to permit certain changes in a number of Becketts. Taking Eh Joe from film to stage brings this collaboration to a new peak of imagination.”

Conquering The Renaissance

“When Ottoman ruler Mehmed II asked Venice for a ‘good painter’, he was sent Gentile Bellini, whose portrait of him brought a lasting touch of the Renaissance to the east.” At the same time, the influence of Bellini’s portrait on Western art was unmistakable, and may represent the original globalization of the European art world.

When The Arcane Becomes Essential

We all know someone who insists on buying all his new recordings on vinyl rather than CD, or banging out correspondence on some ancient typewriter long after everyone switched over to the latest version of Word. The technical term for these people is “pretentious Luddites.” But as Philip Marchand demonstrates, there is still great value in supposedly obsolete technologies, and for those interested in certain types of art, literature, and music, older may be the best, if not the only, option left.

Secretary Of Chamber Music

For many on the left, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. For many on the right, she’s the next shining star of the Republican Party. But there is another side to Rice which she appears to take every bit as seriously as her work in government. “Ms. Rice is an accomplished pianist… Until college she intended to pursue music professionally. Now 51, she plays as often as every other week with [a standing chamber ensemble made up of Washington lawyers with a passion for music.] Until now it was a realm of her very public life that she kept private.”

Daniel Barenboim On The Marketing Of Music:

“We have the whole [phenomenon of] descriptive marketing in the United States, which is how to use music as description and how to market it that way. In other words, what they are saying to the public is that you don’t have to concentrate, you don’t have to listen, you don’t have to know anything about it, just come and you will find some association, and this way you will go into the music. Is that the answer to the so-called crisis in classical music? Accessibility does not come through populism, accessibility comes through more interest and more knowledge.”