Checking In With NY City Opera

“The composer-critic Deems Taylor called the City Center Opera ‘democracy in action, a democracy realizing the work of the individual.’ Tickets started at eighty-five cents—nine and a half dollars, in today’s currency—and topped out at $2.20. These days, you have to pay quite a bit more to get through the doors of what LaGuardia dubbed ‘the people’s opera company.’ Tickets go up to a hundred and twenty dollars, which is more than most orchestra seats for ‘Spamalot.’ Don’t blame City Opera for falling short of its populist mission…”

Scottish Culture Policy – Stalled And Getting Cold

What’s likely to happen to the major overhaul of Scottish arts policy proposed last June? Not much, if things continue the way they’ve been going. “Senior figures involved in producing the landmark report of the Cultural Commission, which was published in June with more than 100 ideas to transform the arts, believe much of its work is being “ignored” or neutered by Scottish Executive officials. Crucial momentum has been lost, the report is being “cherry picked”, and civil service caution will lead to the avoidance of radical change in the world of the arts, insiders warn.”

Classical Music/Theatre Hybrid Finds An Audience

“While classical musical organizations increasingly struggle to draw people into the concert hall, and Broadway has more or less resigned itself to being a purveyor of ‘products’ that happen to be musicals, Hershey Felder has developed a hybrid form. He is one of those rare performers who can hold an audience in rapt silence while playing the most intimate Chopin nocturne or prelude, and then bring that same audience together to sing ‘I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,’ the 1940s standard whose melody is based on Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu in C# Minor.”

Oakland Ballet Lives Again

Last year Oakland Ballet canceled its season and laid off dancers because of financial problems. But this is the company’s 40th anniversary, and this weekend was opening night. “Partly to honor the history of the company, and probably to attempt to win back the loyalty of those audience members who had not taken to Karen Brown’s more adventurous programming since coming onboard in 2000, the program that ran Friday through Sunday was mostly a greatest hits kind of affair. That made it impossible to guess where the company may be going, or whether it will survive, but it was a good chance to re-examine the strengths of this plucky East Bay organization, as well as its blind spots.”

Forgotten Saturdays

So few people are watching TV on Saturday nights, the program schedule has become a wasteland. “Saturday has become the forgotten night for broadcasters, who aren’t entirely sure what to do there anymore. They just know it’s not worth spending much to seek an audience that clearly has other plans. The state of network television on Saturday nights has become so dire that ABC has essentially put a prime-time slot up for auction to anyone who has a compelling idea — as long as it’s done very cheaply.”

Planning For A New Biloxi

Two hundred architects and planners gather in Biloxi to talk about rebuilding. “Over the two and a half hours, the participants grappled with priorities: neighborhood rezoning, downtown, museums and culture, casinos, beachfront, road system, building codes, transit development. They knew they could not do it all, but it was hard not to try. The topics addressed were literally all over the Biloxi map.”

Poet, 79, Wins Literary Award

Landis Everson wins a new literary prize for writers over 50 who have never published a book. “Everson, 79, quiet, pixieish and a little frail after a cataract operation, answered, smiling, ‘Imagine, if you had written a letter to a friend in Chicago and you never had an answer, and you kept writing and writing and not getting any answer back, would you keep writing?’ No matter. Mr. Everson will now receive the Emily Dickinson First Book Award of $10,000, with publication of his book underwritten by the foundation.”

Genre-ly Speaking It’s A Bad Idea

The publishing world is too hung up on genres, insisting that every book be categorized and ranked. “What is it, when Man Booker juries meet, that makes genres ‘inferior’? Why is crime writing, with its ‘very conscious structure’and ability to raise ‘big moral issues’ outside the box of introversion, such a poor relation of ‘literary fiction’?”

First Saddam, Now Karadzic (Everyone’s A Writer)

War-criminal-on-the-run Radovan Karadzic has published a volume of poetry. “Karadzic’s publisher told AP news agency the poems had been completed in the past few months, but refused to say how they came into his possession. They describe mountains, thick green forests, rivers and wild animals. Mr Karadzic is accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for the persecution of non-Serbs in Bosnia.”