Organizations across disciplines operated at a small deficit for the first time in five years in 2023. Choruses, by contrast, were still operating at a surplus on average. In 2019, about two thirds of the choruses reported surpluses, while in 2023 roughly half still reported surpluses. - SMU Cultural Data
The key findings of the Annual Field Report are drawn from the fiscal year 2023 data submitted by OPERA America’s Professional Company Members (PCMs) in the annual Professional Opera Survey administered by SMU Data Arts. - Opera America
"Bochner was one of the key artists associated with the Conceptualist movement during the 1960s and ’70s. In legendary pieces that hardly looked much like art at all, he offered measurements, numbers, words, and others’ photocopied drawings within galleries. There was often little to admire, and that was intentional." - ARTnews
Marching band is more than a pastime. It’s an extreme sport. The real reason the students rehearse so hard isn’t to play well at football games. It’s to prepare for a series of fiercely competitive marching-band contests in the fall, culminating in the Grand National Championships, in Indianapolis. - The New Yorker
Eight in 10 event-goers are planning to attend either the same number of events, or more, compared to last year.
Gen Zs, in particular, are looking to add more live experiences to their calendars. - ArtsHub
Only recently has the human collective begun accepting the fact it is itself mortal. We now appreciate that events unfolded for aeons before us and that our species can disappear, never to return. One day, the cosmos will persist without human witness, nor any inherent tendency to manifest things we cherish. - Aeon
Joshua Barone makes the case for such works as Samuel Barber's Vanessa, Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes’s Street Scene, Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, and Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe. - The New York Times
She weighed just 60 pounds (27.3 kilograms) – about the same size as a 9-year-old. Last month her parents, an Australian couple in their mid-40s, were sentenced to prison in Perth’s District Court of Western Australia for neglecting their only child, even as they ferried her to and from piano and ballet lessons. - CNN
The advisory circle, formed in 2018, was intended to make Canada's oldest ballet company "a more equitable, diverse and inclusive organization," the ballet's website says. But that goal was at odds with the advisory circle's experience with the ballet's management and board of directors, said Morrison, the advisory circle's co-founder. - CBC
"While fainting theatergoers are nothing new — several passed out over the onstage torture in Sarah Kane’s Cleansed at the National Theater almost a decade ago — the sheer number keeling over at The Years stands out." - The New York Times
The Anne Ernaux adaptation currently running in London's West End has been making headlines for the fact that audience members keep fainting during a particularly bloody abortion scene. That didn't happen when productions of the play had no trigger warnings. And the more warnings, the more faintings. - The Guardian
"Faber, the storied U.K. independent publisher, has launched a new division, Faber US, in the United States. The move comes a decade after Faber first nodded to plans to enter the American market and months after fellow British publishing fixture Bloomsbury rolled out a new U.S.-based sales team." - Publishers Weekly
"The principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra was threatened with a defamation action for his comments about chorus members at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. … Gardner said: 'The chorus is made up of two rival Mafia families — who after one performance put each other in (the emergency room)." - BBC
An explainer covering why the Federal government is involved with the Kennedy Center in the first place, how its board differs from other nonprofit boards, what exactly the Kennedy Center board chair does, and the potential consequences of the Trump administration's action. - The Conversation
Frédéric Olivieri will begin his latest term as Director of La Scala’s ballet company on March 1. He first led the company 2002-2007, after having been chief ballet master. He then spent 10 years at the helm of the company's school before serving as the company's director 2017-2020. - Gramilano (Milan)
