Good Morning,
Cruise lines have quietly become one of the largest employers of musical theatre performers, and they’ve stopped commissioning schlocky revues in favor of real productions (The Guardian).
The container keeps moving faster than the field’s map of it. Microdramas — vertical, two-minute, phone-native — are already spawning microsports (The Hollywood Reporter). And a Bay Area critic argues classical music is now underground music (San Francisco Classical Voice) — not an obituary, a repositioning. Underground scenes have workable economics, while mainstream-adjacent ones don’t.
Meanwhile Hollywood posted the biggest box office weekend in history on the strength of exactly two titles (Variety). Not hard to guess which.
Against all that, London’s Royal Ballet and Opera says it needs £60 million simply to keep its building open (The Times).
Also today: Mozart’s best librettist ended up an American, and his descendants are still here (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.