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La Scala Works To Get Younger People To The Opera — And Then Keep Them Coming

Alongside free performances in Milan neighborhoods and cheaper tickets for young adults and families with children, the house has started discounts for people in their 30s.  Says superintendent Dominique Meyer, "It is not as if one's salary suddenly becomes three times as big when you turn 30." - The New York Times

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Is Getting An Overhaul

"Actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge" — honorary president of the Fringe Society — "has hailed a 'new dawn' for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as the biggest ever shake-up of the event aims to crack down on exploitation, reduce its impact on the environment and win over more local people." - The Scotsman

Nijinska: The Choreographer Stuck In Her Brother’s Shadow

As a private entrepreneur without official sponsorship, Diaghilev made his way with an astute combination of connoisseurship and the ability to cultivate an inner circle of wealthy patrons. He kept Nijinska busy making new ballets for the repertory. - Hudson Review

Radical Reimagining? Safer Neighborhoods Begin With The Arts

It is not just a pretty idea. The UPenn Social Impact of the Arts Project studied New York City in 2017. Their data showed that neighborhoods with cultural assets had improved outcomes in education, aging, mental health, public safety and decreased engagement with the criminal justice system. - New York Daily News

Report Finds “Absurd” Levels Of Government Interference In Museums

 The report tracked “astonishing, nearly absurd” cases of political interference at some museums, the commissioners say, and outlines how some museums are poorly run. - The Art Newspaper

Survey: What Artists American Museums Show

Nearly half of all art exhibitions showcased by U.S. museums between 2017 and 2021 were dedicated to less than five percent of a quarter of a million artists, ranging from those born at the start of the 20th century to those working today, according to a new survey. - ARTnews

What Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Arts Presenters Learned During COVID

Another thing that’s changed “is it turns out we like our neighbors. And there are plenty of communities that are under-represented in our spaces, or are economically unable to participate or have a limited participation. - Cedar Rapids Gazette

The Value Of “Anchor” Artists

We discovered that at the center of the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area is the anchor artist: someone central to their community who inevitably pushes the field forward. - Hyperallergic

Why Do Critics Keep Describing Early Music Performances As “Crisp”?

English-language writers seem to use the word over and over (as praise), though critics in other languages don't use equivalents. (Croustillant or croquant? Non.) Certainly nothing like the word appears in old treatises. Baroque violinist and musicologist Addi Liu considers what crisp does and doesn't really mean. - Early Music America

Can Algorithms Be Protected Speech?

Recommendation systems pose difficult questions about what it means to speak, and whether speaking is something that only a person does. How do we draw a line between expressions and actions? And who (or what) can be considered a ‘speaker’? - Psyche

India’s First Prime Minister Himself Decided Whether “Lolita” Was Too Obscene To Be Allowed Into The Country

It was quite the literary drama: Customs in Bombay had impounded the first shipment of Nabokov's novel, the ministers of justice and finance were involved, and back then (1959) there was no Censor Board. So Jawaharlal Nehru himself read the book and rendered his decision. - Scroll (India)

The Internet As Endless Doom Scroll

It might seem the other way around: that our fleeting attention is the result of an internet that’s unrelentingly feeding us the now. But my hunch is that people feel stuck or move on because online, these events feel like things that have happened, rather than something that is happening. - The Atlantic

The Scene In “How I Learned To Drive” That Paula Vogel Herself Says Makes No Sense

Declares the playwright, "It makes no sense in the structure of the play. It's a complete interruption of the narrative."  But she won't cut it because "I don't think it came from me. ... (Writing it) literally felt like I was taking dictation." Yet actor David Morse made sense of it. - Variety

Stalin – Man Of Ideas

Stalin was a man of ideas, to the point where he thought that by changing the ideas to which people are exposed he could redesign human nature itself. - New Criterion

Facing Protests, Britain’s Largest Cinema Chain Cancels A Film About The Prophet Muhammad’s Daughter

The Lady of Heaven, about Fatima and her husband Ali (the first Shia imam), was written by a Shia cleric and seems intended to be reverent. But following angry protests calling the movie blasphemous and sectarian, the Cineworld chain has pulled it from screens. - BBC

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