The turnaround of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the past year has been amazing. Artistic director Michael Boyd was visibly jubilant at the company’s most successful Stratford season in 10 years, the slashing of the crippling deficit he inherited – and above all confounding the advisers who warned him Middle England would stay away from his current season of 17th century Spanish plays: “I’m glad my optimism about human nature has been rewarded.”
Tag: 09.15.04
The Met’s New President
“For the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has chosen a woman as president: Emily Kernan Rafferty, the Met’s current senior vice president for external affairs. Ms. Rafferty will succeed David E. McKinney when he retires in January.”
The Endangered Instruments
UK youth orchestras have a record number of auditionees. But there’s a big shortage of players for some instruments – the bassoon, oboe, double bass, viola, harp, trombone and tuba. Youth Music have recently called these instruments “endangered species”
Venice: Taking Architecture’s Temperature
The Venice Architecture Biennale take the temperature olf contemporary architecture. “Where the Victorians tried to cope with the unnerving urban explosion of the Industrial Revolution with architecture that appeared four-square, authoritative and inevitable, modern architects, or at least those highlighted at the biennale, seem to think that the way to respond to the equally unstable post-industrialised world is to create buildings that appear as if they too are in a state of constant change. This, of course, is a fallacy.”
Picasso’s “Secret” Painting
“A ‘secret’ painting by the young Pablo Picasso was unveiled at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao yesterday after experts found it hidden beneath layers of paint on another of his canvasses. The 104-year-old painting was yesterday hailed as Picasso’s first Paris picture, painted during a visit in 1900 when he was 19.”