The Eternal City seems like a paradise to outsiders. Art, food, beauty. But “it is virtually impossible to earn a living. To live here with a minimum of dignity (renting a small flat, eating out occasionally, but no car and no proper holidays), you need a good 3,000 euros a month pre-tax, say 1,800 euros post-tax (roughly £2,100 and £1,250 respectively). However modest this seems, it is not what you will get. While in the Anglo-Saxon world most adults expect to be able to live independently off their salaries, in Italy most don’t. They stay with their families. Indeed, a staggering 70 per cent of single Italian men between the ages of 25 and 29 live in subsidised comfort at home, where their meagre earnings do very nicely as pocket money.”
Tag: 08.27.03
Behind Doors At Covent Garden
Sir Colin Southgate steps down as chairman of Covent Garden after a tumultuous five years. “In February 1998, when Southgate was parachuted in by Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, it seemed unlikely that there would be a Royal Opera House left for anyone to visit. The builders had been in for almost two years, their costs were soaring towards £214 million and the imposition of a businessman outsider was generally believed to be the Government’s last throw before merging Covent Garden with English National Opera and disbanding the orchestra.”
The New Museums
Museums have been monuments to the past. But they’re evolving. “We have once again begun to see museums as our forebears did: as palaces of edification and delight, buildings that enhance the cultural life of cities and the intellectual lives of their inhabitants. Technology is playing a huge part in this revitalisation. Audio guides, animatronics, oral reconstructions, video, computer graphics, interactive displays, computers that recreate the sights, sounds and even smells of days gone by, all feature increasingly heavily in the museums of today.”
Opera Boot Camp
Eighty-six promising young opera singers gather in Israel for an opera boot camp. “Survival in the dicey world of opera — which can demand more years of preparation than brain surgery, without the guaranteed payoff — was a subtext during the 17th summer of the Israel Vocal Arts Institute’s program. Participants have a four-week schedule of one-on-one voice, diction and role coaching, and almost nightly performances, with public master classes, concerts and eight fully staged productions.”
The Rock Star Countertenor?
“In the past few weeks the charismatic American vocalist David Daniels – who has ridden the countertenor boom of the past decade to something like classical music rock star status – and his Perth-born accompanist, guitarist Craig Ogden, seem to have successfully co-opted Justin Timberlake’s business plan. Just look at the cover of the album, A Quiet Thing, where the duo stare out moodily in casual shirts…”