“It may sound like an old-fashioned ‘poet stands up to tyranny’ story, like something out of ‘Les Miz’—‘Can you hear the people sing?’—but it’s really kind of like that.”

“Streep isn’t interested in inhabiting a character as much as presenting her latest incarnation in the manner of a student presenting the flawlessly constructed jigamajoo she’s rigged up for the Science Fair, waiting for the ribbons to be pinned to her chest. After eight Golden Globes, three Oscars, and 46 nominations between the two ceremonies, […]

“‘I was merely a fool poet,’ he said, ‘with nothing but poetry in his bag, hoping the energy and joy that brought poems from chaos would carry me to the children.’ The school, the Children’s Storefront, has flourished in three adjoining townhouses on East 129th Street, becoming a fully accredited, tuition-free school with a $4 […]

Walter Kirn: “Here’s the problem: I’d met rich eccentrics at Princeton and Oxford. If I’d never met one, I probably would have seen through him — but because I’d met them and they were so crazy, he just seemed like another crazy one of them.”

“When friends and relatives wished her a happy 90th birthday in 2011, her family said in a statement, she replied, ‘I am only 90 in London.’”

“These clashes were always expressions of Mr. Mortier’s bracing and intellectually charged vision of opera, and his disdain for the decorous irrelevance often associated with it.”

“I got into trouble in the past for my nonfiction, and I swore, ‘I’m never going to write anything with a footnote again.’ “

“From pop culture to high culture, Venezuela’s conflict is leading actors, artists, athletes and fashion designers to voice their support for the antigovernment protesters, with a minority backing President Nicolás Maduro.”

“Pavel Dmitrichenko, a Bolshoi soloist, was convicted in December of organizing the attack and sentenced to six years in prison. The Moscow City Court on Thursday reduced his sentence by six months to 5½ years.”

“They have not just [hired] renovation architects, they’ve got restoration architects – historical, sensitive architectural work going on, so things are improved without changing.”

A virtuoso of the humble tin whistle, Potts joined Paddy Moloney and colleagues in 1962 to join the group that went on to become global megastars of Irish folk music.

His student performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers on 5 March 1964 put a rocket under the musical establishment.

“As well as being known for his radical reinvention of the operatic form, fusing electronic music into his operas and theatre works, Ashley also co-founded the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in 1958 alongside Gordon Mumma, before creating the performing arts event ONCE Festival in the 60s. He won the John Cage Award for Music […]

“As important as the technology is that powers our lives, businesses also depend on humanities-oriented communicators to articulate why the technology matters. Indeed, every technology company, and certainly every startup trying to make its imprint on the world, needs English majors. Perhaps many.”

“One of her close friends — a friend! — calls Elaine Stritch ‘a Molotov cocktail of madness, sincerity, and genius.’ And now she’s the subject of an up-close and sometimes glaringly personal new documentary.”

“Sitting behind a desk. Always by himself. No ‘customers’ lined inside or outside the drab, low-slung office space in a row of buildings close to downtown Dallas. Just this little, well-groomed, cursing man who was shuffling papers, placing calls and working a calculator.”

“I definitely feel there’s some force for good that’s been with me through life, and I think that comes from all the dead great composers.”

“Instead of leaving for Chile with a band of gangsters, one stays in Paris and writes a novel. That seems to me a great adventure.”

“His death on Saturday, the day after the Césars French cinema awards and on the eve of the Oscars, came as he prepared to launch his latest film, The Life of Riley later this month.”

The playwright and screenwriter (Reckless, Prelude to a Kiss, Longtime Companion, Marry Me a Little, The Light in the Piazza) talks about drinking with his mother, running out of money and work even after he became famous, overcoming addiction, and what Philip Seymour Hoffman literally chased him down to say.

“Four human teeth found buried outside Paul Gauguin’s hut in the Marquesas Islands are almost certainly those of the artist … But the discovery throws into question an almost universally held belief among art historians – that the French painter suffered from syphilis.”

His rare guitar went missing at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. So he wrote a post about it on Facebook and…

He first became famous in the 1960s and ’70s, revitalizing flamenco music through his partnership with singer Camarón de la Isla. He went on to attract new fans by blending flamenco with jazz and Latin American music, and he was ultimately recognized as one of the world’s greatest guitarists.

“If anything betrays Whistler’s military background, it is his conception of the artist’s life as a series of frequent engagements with the enemy – hostile critics, backward-looking institutions, uncomprehending patrons, philistines in general. … Was Whistler just as belligerent toward his art as he was with the wider world into which he sent it? You […]

How David Bar Katz, the longtime friend of the late actor who found his lifeless body, convinced (that’s as good a word as any) the tabloid to endow an annual $45,000 prize called the Relentless Award.

Dominic Antonucci, one of ballet’s biggest stars, “was attacked and robbed by a group as he took a walk in a park, just before the company was due to perform on stage.”

A successful concert musician in Prague before World War II, she was interned at the Nazi’s Potemkin concentration camp, Theresienstadt, where she played in the now-famous orchestra. She is the subject of the short documentary The Lady in Number 6, in contention for an Oscar this weekend.

A major star during the 1970s, he made headlines when he abruptly retired from the stage at age 35, when many observers thought he was at his peak. He went on to direct three ballet companies – Santiago (twice), Cincinnati, and English National – where he raised standards, garnered international attention, and always seemed to […]