“Even in this increasingly crowded field the new $240 million Tianjin Grand Theater stands out for the boldness of its ambition … Unlike many other grand theaters – an unfortunate number of which stand empty their first few years – the Tianjin Grand Theater also has a performance-packed opening season and a clear vision for its future.”
Tag: 06.01.12
Las Vegas Philharmonic Music Director, Evidently Peeved, Declines To Renew Contract
“Fresh off Memorial Day Weekend, about 6 a.m., [David] Itkin cut loose with an email to the L.V. Phil’s board of directors, which he copied to the LVP Orchestra Players Committee, stating that he planned to leave the orchestra in 2013. In that message, Itkin said that artistic differences and a lack of institutional transparency weighed in his decision to leave his post.”
Shakespeare’s Globe Gives Series Of ‘Midnight Matinees’
The company is giving three full-length Shakespeare plays one performance each with a start time of 11:59pm. The shows are aimed at fellow theatre professionals, who can come and watch after their own performances that evening are finished.
BBC Radio Host Finally Freed From Zimbabwean Custody
Petroc Trelawny, a presenter for BBC Radio 3, had been arrested for violating the terms of his tourist visa by taking employment in Zimbabwe because he was emceeing a music festival on a volunteer basis. “But his ordeal was ended when a magistrate ruled there was nothing to prevent a tourist taking part in public music events and dismissed the charge.”
Judith Nelson, 72, Pioneering Soprano Of Baroque Revival
Beginning in the late 1970s, her dozens of recordings with William Christie, René Jacobs, Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner, Emma Kirkby and others were standard-setters. She was also a founding member of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and she performed regularly in the Bay Area until she was 60, her pure voice remarkably intact.
Redesigning The Costumes For Balanchine’s Symphony In C
“A short documentary goes behind the scenes at the New York City Ballet, where Marc Happel, the director of costumes, creates a new, Swarovski-encrusted look for the company’s signature ballet.”
Beefing Up The Best-Friend Role In Chick Flicks
“In the past decade, female friends in romantic comedies have been taking on increasingly prominent roles, reflecting the fact that many women are delaying marriage until later in life. In these films, ‘female friendship supersedes heterosexual romance,’ says [media scholar] Leger Grindon.”
What’s It Like To Be The Literary Executor Of Your Hero?
“[Edward] Mendelson’s special connection with Auden was studiously based on the work, and what it revealed of Auden’s world view, his ideas on poetry, art, religion and morality. To hear Mendelson expound on Auden is to hear a man who, over four decades of scholarship, has caught the cast of another’s mind perfectly, deeply, and eloquently. Even though he never knew it then, in that 20-year-old dumbstruck student, WH Auden had found a clearer afterlife than the rest of us will ever manage to find.”
Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better (But It Might Be Inevitable) In The Art World
Jerry Saltz: “Biennials have become sprawling and ubiquitous. Ditto art fairs. Galleries are vaster than they’ve ever been. But who is all this bigness good for? Is it any good at all?”
The (Horrified) Reactions To The Orbit Just Keep On Coming
“Envisioned as a symbol of London looming over the site of this summer’s Olympic Games, the Orbit, which visitors will enter, ascend and explore, is designed as an attraction to rival the London Eye and Big Ben for decades to come. And, at least for now, the sculpture is also serving as a prime target for British Olympic crankiness.”