“He was a powerfully individual composer, an amazingly talented conductor and one of the most quotable critics ever to put pen to paper. So why haven’t you heard of him?…”

“Four months after ‘Virginia Woolf’ opened, the original cast made a studio recording of the play. Columbia Records released it as a pricey four-LP set that went out of print a few years later and was never reissued–until now. Masterworks Broadway has finally released ‘Virginia Woolf,’ both as a digital download and as a two-CD set. What’s more, it’s even more of a rarity than you might suppose. The ‘Virginia Woolf’ album is still, so far as I know, the only uncut commercial sound recording of a major 20th-century English-language play to have been made by the entire original cast…”

“Not surprisingly, my parents’ generation did everything they could to make life easier for their own children. Was that good for us? I wonder. It certainly didn’t do us any good from a cultural point of view. I’m struck by how few boomers have embraced adult culture in middle age. My impression is that they’d much rather watch sitcoms than read novels, go to the opera or listen to jazz. In large part they’re a cohort of Peter Pans, determined not to grow up any more than they can help…”

“Theater companies everywhere have felt the economic chill and reacted anxiously. On Broadway, big-name revivals and commodity musicals are increasingly all there is; elsewhere, small-cast plays and stock comedies abound. But you can always see good acting, and if you keep an eye out, you’ll find no shortage of challenging fare…”

“What’s gone wrong with theater? It isn’t a matter of quality control. I’ve been reviewing performances from coast to coast since 2004, and I continue to be impressed by what I see. Instead, what I’m hearing from regional artistic directors is that they’re being slammed by the on-demand mentality…”

“Mr. Gates thinks it immoral for rich people to give money to museums instead of medical projects, presumably those that have received the official Bill Gates Seal of Moral Approval. To be sure, he deserves full credit for putting his own money where his mouth is: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gives away some $4 billion a year, much of which is used to support health-related initiatives in developing countries, including a world-wide initiative to stamp out polio. Good for him–but when it comes to art, he’s got it all wrong, and then some…”

“According to management guru Peter Drucker, hiring an effective successor to a departing CEO is ‘the ultimate test of any top management and the ultimate test of any institution.’ When it comes to arts organizations, I’d say that the ultimate test is knowing when an institution is suffering from a case of creative and administrative sclerosis that is about to become terminal, then doing something about it…”

“Today’s youngsters simply can’t imagine the overwhelming power of the cultural transformation that was made possible by the invention of the VCR…”

“Mr. Steel did what he thought he had to do, and he may well have been right–but for better or worse, his New York City Opera is now a thing unto itself, one whose success or failure will have nothing to do with the company’s celebrated past. It’s his baby now…”

“Were it not for their work, comparatively few of us would be able to enjoy the plays of Chekhov, Ibsen or Molière. They are our lifelines to the wider world of theater. Yet literary translators are the perpetually unsung heroes and heroines of literature. If you doubt it, try naming a half-dozen of them off the top of your head…”