“Even a reference junkie like me, who reads Be-Br in the bath and compares old and recent Dictionaries of National Biography (DNB), must accept the march of progress and admit, tear in eye, that the fourth edition of Colin Larkin’s Encyclopedia of Popular Music (EPM), out this week at £555, is going to be the last major cultural reference work ever to be rolled out in print.”
Tag: 12.20.06
The Reality – Connie’s A Big Hit
Connie Fisher beat 6000 other actresses to play Maria in a new West End production of The Sound Of Music. “The reviews were stunning, the advance sales are colossal and, of course, such success could be going to the head of the 23-year-old from Milford Haven. With the same speed that television turned ambition into reality, adulation could convert the sweet ingénue into a storming diva.”
Stolen Hermitage Painting Returned
A painting believed to have been stolen from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum five years ago was presented Wednesday to the leader of Russia’s Communist Party.
The Gergiev Effect (All $45m Of It)
Valery Gergiev is famous for his heavy workload and hard-headed dedication to the tasks he sets for himself and his orchestras. George Loomis writes that “his latest accomplishment off the podium is his most visible yet — a $45 million concert hall conceived and constructed in a mere three years, a classic example of turning adversity into opportunity.”
Borat The Jew
“Sacha Baron Cohen’s antics as Borat may have made him and his backers the target of lawsuits and screening bans, but he’s going down very well in one rather unexpected place: Israel. That’s because Israeli film fans understand what the anti-semitic character is saying when he’s supposedly spouting Kazakh – Borat is actually speaking fluent Hebrew.”
Putting His Sales Where His Mouth Is
A UK author is taking a stand on behalf of independent booksellers by demanding that Amazon stop offering his book for sale on their website. “George Walker, author of Tales from an Airfield, was horrified to find that his new title was featured on the site without his permission, following good sales in bookshops.”
SF Opera Reports Huge Surplus
“San Francisco Opera has ended the fiscal year 2006 with a surplus of more than half a million dollars on a budget of more than $60 million. The audited final figure for the surplus is $557,367 on an annual operating budget of $60,401,983. The company’s operating revenue grew by almost 23%, from $24,292,464 to $29,866,346, with income from ticket sales for the core season surpassing $20 million for the first time in four years.”
Outwater To Take Over K-W Symphony
Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, which recently averted bankruptcy, has offered its music directorship to Edwin Outwater. “Outwater, who recently concluded his tenure as resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, has accepted a four-year contract with the KWS which begins with the 2007-08 season. He has also agreed to serve as artistic advisor in preparation of plans for the coming season.”
Famous Lilies Blooming Anew In Paris
When Paris’s Musée de l’Orangerie reopened earlier this year, it marked “a kind of Second Coming in the art world, 80 years after [Claude] Monet, near the end of his days, donated his supreme achievement to the people of France.” Monet’s Water Lilies series, among the painter’s best-loved works, are again viewable at the museum following a hellish 6-year renovation that “turned into a complicated nightmare involving the subterranean world of Paris.”
High Hopes For A Downloadable Future
As orchestras begin to wade into the vast world of online music, most acknowledge that the investment likely won’t pay off big in the short term. Still, the Philadelphia Orchestra, which recently launched an in-house, online store offering downloadable recordings and live concerts, “hopes that one day the orchestra can earn 10 percent to 15 percent of its budget through its online store – including not only recordings but also advertising and sponsorships.”