Refugee From Graz

Karen Stone is Dallas Opera’s new general director – but she’s largely unknown in American opera. Her career has been in Europe, in England, Germany and Austria. Most recently she’s been running the opera company in Graz. The opera there has a $30 million budget and produces long repertory seasons. Dallas – with a $10 million budget is much smaller. So why leave? “We have huge fixed costs [in Graz], because of the huge amount of employees in the technical department. And we are going through a phase with politicians who are trying to reduce the funding they give us. They want to semi-privatize us. But we don’t have the possibility of seeking funds outside. It’s incredibly dangerous for the future.

Online Music – Industry Trying To Catch Up

The success of Apple’s music downloading service has surprised recording industry execs. But why? “People in the entertainment industry are traditionally Luddites – they don’t understand technology and they don’t use it. They didn’t perceive the danger [from file-trading sites] until too late in the game, and now they’re trying to play catch-up.”

Sampling The Legal Online Music

A reporter tries out various legal online music services. It’s a mixed success. “Should I take it as a sign that trying to sample the wares of several of the leading legal music sites for PC users crashed my computer and wiped out its hard drive?” On the other hand, some of the sites are downright fun.

A Celebrated Writer Who Isn’t In Top Form (He Admits It)

It’s been 17 years since Larry McMurtry won his Pulitzer. He admits he’s not been in top form for some time now. That doesn’t stop him from writing. “He allots only 120 hours of writing time to every novel now, a breakneck pace even for a prolific writer like McMurtry, who also revises his first drafts more lightly than most writers. In his autobiographical ‘Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen,’ he revealed two things, one intentional, one not: He considers himself only a shadow of what he once was, the greatest western novelist of his generation. The second, unintentional revelation? His nonfiction of the past decade has far surpassed his fiction.”

Understanding Orwell

A conference debates the work of George Orwell. “Celebrated (and often sanctified) for his antitotalitarian novels ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ Orwell’s reportage in ‘Homage to Catalonia’ and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier,’ and for scores of essays on everything from communism to brewing a proper cup of tea, Orwell succeeded in his stated ambition – ‘to make political writing into an art.’ He was also a writer of dazzling range. As Thomas Cushman, the Wellesley sociology professor who organized the conference, put it, ”There was nothing that he didn’t turn his guns on.’ But at the conference, participants frequently turned their guns on each other…”