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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 29, 2008

TT: So what else is new?

October 29, 2008 by Terry Teachout

neaOperaLogo.pngBusy as always, I’m off to Washington this morning to attend a meeting of the National Council on the Arts. On Friday afternoon I’ll be lunching at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the National Endowment for the Arts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg are throwing a lunchtime bash for Leontyne Price, Carlisle Floyd, Richard Gaddes, and James Levine, the first recipients of the new NEA Opera Honors.
Well-informed readers will recall that Gaddes retired the other day from the Santa Fe Opera, where one of his last duties was to commission Paul Moravec and me to write The Letter. I had nothing whatsoever to do with Gaddes’ receiving an NEA Opera Honor–the NEA is exceedingly fussy about conflicts of interest, real or perceived–but it goes without saying that I’m glad he’s getting it, and I’ll be saying a few words to that effect on Friday.
You know the rest. I’ll blog when I can. See you around.

CAAF: Morning coffee

October 29, 2008 by cfrye

• There was no more sleep for me that night, and I was thankful when daylight came. Another story to print and read in a sunlit place, Edith Wharton’s “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell.”
(Previous Halloween installments: Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” and Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat.”)
• This catalog of haunted libraries in the Northeast makes a good companion to the Wharton. The case of the ghost who habituates the U.S. Capital Building Rotunda (former near neighbor to the Library of Congress) is particularly poignant. He’s said to be the ghost of a librarian who is looking for “$6,000 he stashed in the pages of some obscure volumes.” The library of course has long since been moved, the money found and (one assumes) dispersed … and still the poor guy wanders. One wonders, Can no one tell him? Can’t a collection be taken up? And what exactly were the titles of those obscure volumes? I picture the librarian alive and stalking through the stacks all, “Population Fluctuations on the Lapsang Peninsula (1812-1843)? Ain’t no one looking in there.” (Via Maud.)

TT: Snapshot

October 29, 2008 by Terry Teachout

Frank Lloyd Wright appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line?:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

October 29, 2008 by Terry Teachout

“Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood–we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.”
Jean Rostand, The Substance of Man

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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