He’s already got the building: the spectacular Royal Opera House, Muscat, which opened in 2011 and is reportedly the Omani capital’s second-most-popular tourist attraction. The Economist looks at Sultan Qaboos’s reasons for funding European opera and a few of the difficulties in making the form work in the conservative Arab Gulf. – The Economist
Tag: 06.15.19
Those Billionaires Who Pledged Millions To Restore Nôtre-Dame ‘Have Yet To Pay A Penny’
“Less than a tenth of the hundreds of millions promised has been donated, the French culture ministry said Friday. Only €80 million of the €850 million pledged has been handed over — and most of that has come in small sums given by ordinary people.” – France 24
Backstage With The Very Butch Boys Of The Bolshoi Ballet
“In Russia, that most macho of societies, male ballet has never been a sniggering joke about guys in tights. There is no finer expression of manly patriotism than to dance, especially for the Bolshoi.” Reporter Janice Turner goes to the theatre to watch the company’s men rehearse (what else?) Spartacus. – The Times (UK)
Susannah Hunnewell, Publisher Of The Paris Review, Dead At 52
“Ms. Hunnewell joined the magazine as an editorial intern in the late-1980s, when it was run out of an 8-by-14-foot office in the Upper East Side brownstone of its co-founder and editor George Plimpton. She remained associated with the magazine for the next 30 years … She was named publisher in 2015, taking over from [Antonio F.] Weiss,” her husband. – The New York Times
Leonard Cohen Letters Sell For Five Times Estimates At Auction
The top letter, in which Cohen wrote in December 1960 about being “alone with the vast dictionaries of language,” fetched almost $75,000 compared to an original high estimate of $13,000. – CBC
Study: Busting Stereotypes Of What Millennials Are (And Aren’t)
Today’s young adults are just as likely to endorse traditional racial and gender stereotypes as members of previous generations. And by age 30, those who have earned college degrees enjoy incomes comparable to those of their predecessors. – Pacific Standard
Detective Mystery: Where Is The $450 Million Salvator Mundi?
The most common theory is that the 500-year-old artwork is sitting in storage in Switzerland — specifically in Geneva, where, according to The New York Times, more than a million works of art are kept in secretive tax-free warehouses by collectors and galleries. But last week, another theory emerged in an opinion piece by art dealer Kenny Schachter published on Artnet: that the last known privately-held Leonardo is on a luxury yacht owned by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. – CNN
The Nine Movies And Operas That Defined Franco Zeffirelli’s Work
The critics sometimes found his work overstuffed, with more attention paid to décor than to human beings. But audiences ate it up for decades. – The New York Times
How Post-Modernism Has Shaped Our Culture (And Our Debates)
“In the era of Donald Trump — and YouTube — the most fevered version of the case against postmodernism has become increasingly visible. That is, the claim that a coalition of critical theorists, poststructuralists, multiculturalists, feminists, queer theorists, and African-American and other “studies” professors have successfully conspired to take over educational institutions, the media, and the U.S. government, and even to establish a new International World Order.” – Chronicle of Higher Education
Making Sense of The Complicated Havana Bienal
The Cuban government, which regularly arrests artists and journalists, also expected to welcome a record-breaking 5.1 million tourists this year. Cuba’s leaders are well aware that cultural capital is one of their nation’s major assets. Rage, pain, and dissent were not only openly on view in this Bienal but were featured and promoted with hashtags like #CubaEsCultura. – New York Review of Books