Scottish Opera is looking for a new leader. But who would want to take on such a precarious company, whose recent history is pocked with controversy. “What’s needed is someone with the rare combination of vision and experience to juggle the financial and practical necessities with the artistic skills to successfully fire this esoteric artform. Scottish Opera is there for the taking – and for the making. Inexperience or mediocrity would be disastrous…”
Tag: 04.17.05
Miking The Opera (Okay, Calm Down…)
“For at least 50 years, amplification has regularly been used in opera houses for oracles and offstage voices. It has also been used to transmit the sound of the orchestra to the singers, and vice versa, and to circulate the sound of the ongoing performance throughout the backstage area.” But talk about amplification in the opera house and suddenly everyone gets skittish…
DVD’s Now Drive The Movie Biz
“The avalanche of money generated by DVDs has transformed Hollywood, swinging profitability from the multiplex ticket window to the Wal-Mart checkout line. Income from the sale and rental of new movies, television series and classic films accounts for as much as 60% of a major studio’s profits, as DVDs have become a consumer electronics phenomenon. Yet even in a business that trumpets every nickel of box-office grosses, a title’s precise DVD profits remain one of the industry’s best-kept — and, increasingly, most divisive — secrets.”
The New Vaudeville Is Off-Off
“There are still plenty of musicals and one-man shows on Broadway, but the classic boulevard comedy – once the backbone of commercial theater – has become scarce. By contrast, Off Off Broadway, home base for the avant-garde of Big Ideas and Serious Intentions, is filled with vaudevillian high jinks and lowbrow satire.”
Does The Met Need A Star System?
The Metropolitan Opera is doing okay, but not as well as it used to. So what would set the buzz just a little bit higher? “Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Met were to set up shop as a star factory along the lines of MGM in the 1930’s, leveraging the reputations of its best talents in its own institutional interest.”
Is Scratching The Paint Of Other People’s Cars Art?
An artist is making an exhibition of pictures of him scratching the paint of cars with a key in Glasgow and London. “They should feel glad that they’ve been involved in the creative process. I pick the cars randomly. got the idea when my sister and brother-in-law’s cars were keyed. Is it jealousy that causes someone to key a car? Hatred? Revenge? There is a strong creative element in the keying of a car, it’s an emotive engagement.”
In Australia: Just Give Them The Money!
The Sydney Dance Company and Australia’s symphony orchestras are underfunded and endangered. Now a popular swell of support is rising up, with Sydney’s leading radio host taking up the cause: “Are we cultural slobs, or are we prepared to step up to the plate and get behind our orchestras and the Sydney Dance Company, when we know their cultural worth and the level of community support that they enjoy? So let’s forget the debate. Provide the money, and get on with it.”