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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 12, 2012

TT: Even more good news

April 12, 2012 by Terry Teachout

610x.jpgThe Letter, my first operatic collaboration with Paul Moravec, will be receiving its New York premiere in February of 2013. It will be produced by Dicapo Opera Theatre, with performances scheduled for Feb. 7, 9, 15, and 17 at the company’s Upper East Side theater.
This will be the second production of The Letter, which was commissioned and premiered by the Santa Fe Opera in 2009. Paul and I are revising the score and libretto especially for this revival.
Casting is still in the works–watch this space for details.

TT: Another great day

April 12, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Mood-Indigo.jpgThe John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has just announced that I am being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2012 to support the completion of my next book, Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington.

In case you’re not familiar with the Guggenheim Fellowships, here’s a brief history of the program, drawn from the foundation’s website:

Established in 1925 by former United States Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, in memory of seventeen-year-old John Simon Guggenheim, the elder of their two sons, who died April 26, 1922, the Foundation has sought from its inception to “add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding,” as the Senator explained….

The Fellowships are awarded to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. The Foundation consults with distinguished scholars and artists regarding the accomplishments and promise of the applicants and presents this evidence to the Committee of Selection.

This will be, so far as I know, the first time that the Guggenheim Foundation has supported the writing of a full-length biography of a jazz musician. (One previous recipient of a fellowship started work on such a biography, but it was never completed.)

copland572.jpgBetween three and four thousand people apply for Guggenheims each year, and roughly two hundred of them are chosen. Aaron Copland was a member of the first “class” of fellows in 1925, followed by (among many, many others) W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, Romare Bearden, Saul Bellow, Harold Clurman, Arlene Croce, Merce Cunningham, Stuart Davis, Edwin Denby, Leon Edel, Walker Evans, Martha Graham, Marsden Hartley, Nat Hentoff, David Ives, Randall Jarrell, Keith Jarrett, Alex Katz, Pauline Kael, Jacob Lawrence, Alan Lomax, Marianne Moore, Errol Morris, Mark Morris, Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Puryear, Charles Rosen, Ned Rorem, Andrew Sarris, Virgil Thomson, Lionel Trilling, John Updike, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, Alec Wilder, August Wilson, and Edmund Wilson.

More recently, fellowships have been awarded to Hilton Als, Patricia Barber, Paul Berman, Eric Bogosian, Don Byron, Ethan Canin, Brad Gooch, Philip Gourevitch, Molly Haskell, Jake Heggie, Fred Hersch, Manuela Hoelterhoff, Joseph Horowitz, Pico Iyer, Margo Jefferson, Moisés Kaufman, Mark Lilla, Thomas Mallon, Lynn Nottage, Jed Perl, John Richardson, Kay Ryan, Justin Spring, Basil Twist, Amanda Vaill, Randy Weston, Leon Wieseltier, and–just last year–my friend Richard Brookhiser.

I am deeply honored today.

TT: So you want to see a show?

April 12, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.


BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes July 1, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, unsuitable for children, all performances sold out last week, closes June 2, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND OFF BROADWAY:

• Beyond the Horizon (drama, PG-13, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

• The Lady from Dubuque (drama, PG-13, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

• Lost in Yonkers (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Saturday, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

April 12, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Why, sir, a man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.”
Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson)

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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