This Week’s Highlights:
Governments have moved past defunding culture and are now actively trying to own it. Italy’s government forced a far-right-linked conductor onto La Fenice over the explicit objections of its musicians (ANSA). Germany’s culture commissioner began consulting the domestic intelligence service before approving grants to independent bookshops (The Guardian). Edinburgh, meanwhile, made its entire festival a meditation on America — framing the country’s present as “creativity and cruelty” in the largest presentation of American artists in the festival’s history (The Guardian). Sho decides what culture is for?
The economics are answering from the other direction. UK theatre production costs have doubled in a decade while ticket prices held flat — deficits despite record attendance (The Stage). American plays are now debuting in London because it costs less than Broadway (The New York Times). The Justice Department’s antitrust settlement with Live Nation left the basic ticketing architecture largely intact — worth understanding if you run a ticketed venue, and I wrote an explainer here (Diacritical).
Meanwhile, the work keeps happening at the edges: opera in an IKEA (The Guardian), mariachi students in South Texas for whom music is the local Friday Night Lights (The New York Times), a baritone selling cars on TikTok (Seattle Times).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
