Dr. Ruth McAllister looks at contemporary testimony about Gesualdo and his relationships with others, including his second wife, a rival composer, musicians employed by someone else whom he dressed down to their faces, a former mistress tried for witchcraft, and one of his uncles, St. Carlo Borromeo.
Women Of The Floating World: The Lives Of Japan’s Edo-Period Courtesans
While most of the art depicting the Yoshiwara pleasure district in what is now Tokyo was basically marketing made by and for men, we can still get a picture of the complex world in which the women there lived and worked.
The Revolution Is… Where Do Movies Go From Here?
“Cinema is gone—everyone agrees. And yet cinema also abides, if only so that Jean-Luc Godard can go on delivering valedictions to what it used to be. Like the history of which it’s a part, the moving image has not finished its work, nor is it likely to anytime soon. I think it’s just gotten a little too much into itself.”
Nederlands Dans Theater’s Do-It-Themselves Fundraiser For NGOs
“Switch is an evening conceived, choreographed and produced fully by the NDT performers … all profits from [which] go entirely to a community need the dancers hunt down themselves. … When they’ve targeted an organization, they look for ways to get involved beyond financial contribution. They volunteer their hours, they show up to teach free workshops, they raise awareness.”
How Philip Glass Changed American Music
“Whatever the long-term prospects for Glass’s music may be, no one now doubts its historic significance. One reason musical modernism finally collapsed under its own weight in the 1970s was that Glass and his like-minded contemporaries refused to kowtow to the anti-tonal regime of the postwar avant-garde musical monopoly. As a result, there is no longer a “mainstream” classical-music style.”
Why Are So Many Arts Organizations’ Mission Statements So Bad?
“Yuck! Those are awful, and for different reasons. Some are dumb. Some are unclear. But all are more about the “what” of the organization more than the “why.” There is no expression or explanation of their purpose, no sense of what they are doing that is good for us.”
Time For Domingo To Retire, Says NY Times Chief Critic
Anthony Tommasini, reviewing Verdi’s Ernani at the Met: “The time to stop will just come to [Domingo] when it’s right, he explained. ‘I think it will be one evening,’ he said, ‘after a performance, to say, ‘That’s it.’ It may be the moment for Mr. Domingo to heed his own words.”
Akhil Sharma’s “Family Life” Wins £40,000 Folio Prize For Fiction
The Indian-American banker-turned-author won the second-ever award “for a novel which took him 13 long and painful years to complete, charting one emigrant family’s heartwrenching search for the American dream.”
After Fire, London’s Battersea Arts Centre Gets £1 Million Emergency Funding
“Half the money will help the venue to find an off-site location that will enable it to accommodate productions that were due to be staged in the Grand Hall. The rest … will go towards BAC’s ongoing £13 million redevelopment project, which needed an additional £500,000 to reach its target.”
What ‘Pretty Woman’ Would Have Been Like If They’d Shot The Original Script (Ugly)
“In its original form, which you can read here, it was neither a Cinderella story nor a romantic comedy – it was a cynical, rather depressing tale of a junkie prostitute and the rich asshole she spends a week with. Neither of them is particularly likable, either at the beginning of the story or its conclusion.”
A Solo Theater Piece About The Israel-Palestine Conflict – By Arafat’s Own Foster Daughter
After Raeda Taha’s father was killed while hijacking a passenger plane in 1972, she was, in effect, adopted by Yasir Arafat and later worked as his press secretary. In Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali, Taha looks at the human costs of the conflict, especially those that Palestinians like her father exact on their families.
Amazon.com To Be London’s Theatre Ticket-Seller
A spokesman for Amazon said that, up until this week, the retailer’s theatre ticket offering had been based around “deals” and discounted tickets. “Although that will still be the case for some shows, this is a move to being a genuine ticketer. We are moving away from deals to offering the full range of ticket prices, from bottom to full price.”
Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art Loses Its Director In Censorship Row
“The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (Macba), Bartomeu Marí, has resigned in light of a censorship row over a controversial installation on display at the museum, which shows the former Spanish king in a sexual act with a dog.”
Behind The Scenes Of America’s Top Opera Competition
“The prizes—$15,000 checks to as many as five winners and $5,000 checks to the remaining finalists—would come in handy. But the recognition would be priceless.”
For Love Or Duty: The Complicated Motivations Behind Teaching Reading
How did it come to be, Lynch asks, that “those of us for whom English is a line of work are also called upon to love literature and to ensure that others do so, too”?
Peter Zumthor’s Plan For LACMA Has Been Thoroughly Changed (No More Blob!)
“Once a free-flowing, biomorphic design inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits and the work of the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the design has become noticeably more angular and muscular in recent weeks.” Says LACMA director Michael Govan, “No one will call it a blob anymore. Peter hasn’t given up the curve. But he’s really, really reined it in.”
How “Pretty Woman” Revived Romantic Comedies
“[The film], released 25 years ago today, remains one of the most popular movies, and also the highest-grossing romantic comedy, of all time. It revived the languishing career of Richard Gere; it catapulted Julia Roberts to mega-stardom. … It is also, along with When Harry Met Sally, generally credited with reviving the romantic comedy as a genre.
Cabaret Full Of Immigrants, Breastfeeding Moms, Godless Left-Wingers, Gypsies And A Gay Donkey Hits Local Pub Of Britain’s Top Radical-Right Politician
Nigel Farage is leader of the UK Independence Party, a nationalist group that wants to curb immigration and take Britain out of the EU. Dan Glass took his Beyond UKIP cabaret to Farage’s hometown and briefly confronted him on the street – and it hit the news. Here’s a report from the one journalist who was there.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.23.15
Dynamic pricing and market segmentation at the theatre (and the hospital)
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2015-03-23
Keep Talking About What Art Means
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-03-22
Crystal Bridges Reshuffles PostWar Galleries With 2014 Acquisitions
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-03-22
Spike Wilner On Playing For Listeners
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-03-23
An Arts Advocacy Conversation in Lynchburg, VA
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-03-23
An Arts Advocacy Conversation in Thayer, MO
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-03-23
An Arts Advocacy Day Conversation in Hartford, CT
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-03-23
An Arts Advocacy Conversation in Salt Lake City, UT
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-03-23
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Net Neutrality’s Final Frontier Takes Shape (Not So) Far Above The Earth
“A heavenly Internet is taking shape above our heads. In the same week this January, the spaceflight companies SpaceX and Virgin Galactic both announced plans for “megaconstellations” of low-Earth orbit, or LEO, satellites delivering broadband to every inch of the inhabited world.”
A “New Yorker” Financial Journalist Investigates Peter Gelb’s Met Opera House
James B. Stewart examines the company’s greatly increased expenses, falling attendance figures, drops in large donations, dissension on the board of directors, and the difficult 2014 labor negotiations (and the disputed financial data tossed around at the time).