By arranging himself with the powers that be, Gergiev has maneuvered his way to a singular position in Russian cultural politics. On January 30, 2018, he led a performance at the Russian National Defense Control Centre, viewing with Putin the weapons systems deployed by Russian forces in Syria. - Van
Night after night, through multiple performances of a production's run at the Met or New York City Opera, Lois (the city's entire opera community referred to her as Lois) was in the audience, and more often than not went backstage afterwards to solicit autographs and talk to singers. "She could tell you anything going on in your performances on...
Even as others have been canceled or have dialed back their aggression, Rudin's behavior has continued unabated, leaving a trail of splintered objects and traumatized employees in his path. - The Hollywood Reporter
"For more than 50 years, was an indefatigable contributor to the contemporary experimental dance scene in Philadelphia and around the world. … Mr. Fischbeck; his former wife, Brigitta Herrmann; and fellow innovator Hellmut Gottschild founded and directed Group Motion Multimedia Dance Theater in 1968. The Philadelphia dance troupe, internationally known for its avant-garde performances and outreach to enthusiasts,...
"A self-described 'freethinking intelligence yet a child of the ghetto,' … a public intellectual who examined such topics as the cultural ferment of the 1960s, the artistic legacy of the Depression and the evolution of the American novel in works that were both penetrating and penetrable, offering a model of what he regarded as the ideal role of...
Rembert's art "told the story of the Jim Crow South. It was exhibited in galleries and museums and helped support his family, though they lived in poverty." - The New York Times
Kopit "thrust Off Broadway into a new era with the absurdist satirical farce Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad and earned Tony Award nominations for two wildly different plays, Indians and Wings, and the musical Nine." - The New York Times
Demby was a composer of electronica and New Age music. Her 1986 album Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate sold more than 200,000 copies. "Pulse magazine named it one of the top three New Age albums of the decade and called it 'a landmark, full-length electronic symphony reminiscent of Baroque sacred music with crystalline effects that take you out of...
Yuh-Jung Youn didn't have acting on her life plan. "The self-taught thespian never envisioned a life in the performing arts. Her international breakthrough seems to her, like everything else along the way, fortuitous. 'It’s embarrassing,' she said. 'Most people fell in love with the movies or fell in love with theater. But in my case it was just an...
She traveled to the Low Countries and Suriname on missions for King Charles II, and she took up writing to support herself because he never paid her. She went on to become one of Restoration London's most popular, and most controversial, playwrights and poets, using her work to argue against slavery and forced marriage and for women's right to...
From 1980 to 1994, he led a team of workers who carefully washed away, frequently with plain soap and water, centuries' worth of dust, smoke and other grime from Michelangelo's work — revealing what were, to those who had been accustomed to the dim, grim aspect of the unrestored "Last Judgment" fresco, the astonishingly vivid colors the artist used....
Intact depictions of the world's first known monotheist, husband to Nefertiti and father of Tutankhamun, are rare (subsequent rulers of Egypt tried to erase him from history), and those few that have survived unvandalized look so odd that many scholars think they were intended to be symbolic and stylized rather than naturalistic. Yet there is a surviving mummy which...
"In a dusty workshop near the Hudson River, lined with machines built as long ago as 1881, Mr. Laubin crafted his oboes and English horns with almost religious precision. He wore an apron and puffed a cob pipe as he drilled and lathed the grenadilla and rosewood used to make his instruments. (The pipe doubled as a testing device:...
“I was once a hot shot, I was once the punk,” Theroux said. “And anyone who has once been a punk, eventually you’re older, and you see the turning of the years as it is. We all feel it, every writer. They might deny it. But they do, they all feel it.” - The New York Times
The actor started performing when she was 14, feeling like most 14-year-olds - awkward and unlovable ... until she got onstage. "I felt so great on stage. We wore fishnet tights, macs and berets, and sang a series of sweet French songs. I knew I was good, because I was absolutely in tune with myself at that moment." -...
