Nike Wagner, Wieland’s daughter, pretty much knew that she’d never lead the Bayreuth Festival once her uncle Wolfgang took over. (The job went to his daughters, Eva and Katharina; Eva is now retiring.) So she’s made her own way as a writer (including a predictably dirt-filled family tell-all) and dramaturg, and now she’s directing the world’s top Beethoven festival.
Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum To Expand (Again)
“[The capital’s] main Modern and contemporary art museum will expand its permanent exhibition space by a total of 3,000 sq. m by the end of 2015. … The project will ‘finally’ join the Francisco Sabatini-designed building, which fully opened as an art museum in 1992, with the extension by Jean Nouvel, completed in 2005.”
In Praise Of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Midwestern Immoderation
Justin Davidson, who recently completed a Wright tour through Pennsylvania and Wisconsin: “This processional of midwestern masterpieces reminds us that great architecture is not always the most sensible solution, or the most frugal, or the sturdiest. Sometimes it’s brilliantly insane.”
Does Creative Ability Really Run In Families?
People have been arguing about this for a long time. Researchers have been studying it for almost as long. Maria Konnikova takes a brief look at the history.
And The All-Time Leader For Pirated Downloads Is …
“At their peak, episodes of the HBO series [Game of Thrones] accounted for more than half of all TV shows pirated on file-sharing networks, and more than all music downloads combined.”
Venue Backs Down On Kicking Out UK Jewish Film Fest
The Tricycle Theatre “which refused to host the UK Jewish Film Festival while it is sponsored by the Israeli embassy, amid the Gaza crisis, has now dropped its objection … but is too late for this year’s festival as alternative venues have been arranged.”
Some Of The Country’s Best Dance Takes Place On The Subway
“This choreography of grit and grace perseveres, despite an increase of arrests by the New York Police Department, as a delicate wonder, glued together by exacting precision and indelible stamina. Plus, there’s the joy of watching a dance where dancing is not allowed: It’s a subversive performance. It’s also a surprise.”
You Can Hate-watch The Oxford Dictionaries As They Add Amazeballs, YOLO, And More
“Someone live-tweeting Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle might preface a description of earlier episodes with ICYMI (in case you missed it). And if the production turns out to be a hot mess, SMH (shaking my head in disapproval) will unquestionably come in handy.”
What We Fear Now
“During the Cold War, the conflicts that powered the thriller were rooted in ideology: Le Carre’s Berlin and Greene’s Havana were mainly backdrops against which the clash of the superpowers was played out. The new thrillers were not focused on ideology but on place; it was the peeling away of layers of culture and history that gave these novels their impetus.”
Salman Rushdie Explains Why Kazuo Ishigoro’s ‘Remains Of The Day’ Is Such A Perfect Novel
“What then is our true relationship to power? Are we its servants or its possessors? It is the rare achievement of Ishiguro’s novel to pose Big Questions – What is Englishness? What is greatness? What is dignity? – with a delicacy and humour that do not obscure the tough-mindedness beneath.”
You, Too, Can Be (One Of Hundreds As) A Broadway Producer!
“Broadway has become a very expensive game, with producers taking our money in exchange for profits and all our names being billed above the title. … It’s getting out of control. But Broadway nowadays can’t survive without us.”
If Mainstream TV And Movies Won’t Show Latinas And Latinos, So What? There’s YouTube
“The network, which distributes lifestyle videos in both Spanish and English, surpassed 6 billion views. In June, the company announced that its Series B funding round had netted $10 million.”
Most Critics Have Deserted The Edinburgh Fringe Fest, And That’s Not A Good Thing
“Very few first-string critics now make an appearance at the fringe, and those that do often find the filling in of forms in triplicate that is necessary to secure a ticket off-putting.”
London’s National Gallery (FINALLY) Allows Photography – Yes, Including Selfies With Self-Portraits
“What’s this going to do to art? What’s it going to do to a generation? … Once you stick your big face in the foreground, the experience is different again, less like art and more like going to the seaside and putting your head above the body of a wrestler in a swimming costume.”
In ‘La Trashiata,’ A Fake Celebrity Real Opera [VIDEO]
“The photographer has now turned her hand to Opera, creating La Trashiata, which features dopplegangers of Charles Saatchi and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, among others.”
George Orwell’s Estate Is Not Happy With Amazon. Not Happy At All.
“I’m both appalled and wryly amused that Amazon’s tactics should come straight out of Orwell’s own nightmare dystopia, 1984.”
What’s ‘American’ About Ballet?
“The story of a frontier outlaw and his string of murders was far removed from the lofty and exotic subjects of European ballet.”
Paris’s Musée Picasso Finally Has A Reopening Date
“After five years of delays and difficulties, culminating in a public quarrel and the firing of its president in May, the museum’s reopening is finally set for the artist’s birthday, Oct. 25. … The renovation has doubled the public space, modernized outdated facilities and added a new entrance, a multimedia auditorium and a Cubist garden with geometric topiary trees.”
Uncle Jack Charles – Stolen Child, Ex-Con Heroin Addict, Movie Actor, Grandfather Of Australian Indigenous Theatre
He was raised by a white foster mother and stumbled across his blood family by chance at age 17. Began learning acting at 19. Was rejected for a starring Aboriginal role in favor of a South Asian actor. Co-founded Australia’s first aboriginal theatre company. And that was just his life before 1980.
California Orchestra’s Board Ousts Maestro By Unanimous Vote
“David Ramadoff’s 33rd season holding the baton for the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra will be his last. Suzie Peterson, third-year VSO board president, said the organization seeks ‘a different direction’ after a 10-0 vote to replace the maestro following the third and final 2014-2015 concert on April 12”
Paulo Coelho Is King Of The Internet
“Years before other novelists joined Twitter and Facebook, Mr. Coelho was reaching out to fans on MySpace and, later, putting short videos on YouTube. He has accounts on Instagram, Tumblr, Vimeo, Google+ and Pinterest.” On Twitter and Facebook, he has more followers than Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Danielle Steel and John Grisham combined.
The Magical Metamorphoses Of Indian Classical Dance
Alastair Macaulay: “Opera people often – and rightly – remark on the marvelous films of the soprano Maria Callas in concert; they show us the very moment when her whole face subtly switches into the character she is about to sing. It feels miraculous. Yet such moments keep recurring during individual Indian dances: the face changes contour; the body becomes another being.”
Jeff Bridges And The Zen Of An Almond Croissant
“I love taste, and I love the immediate gratification of flavor and that satisfying swallow you feel all over. But I look at my body and I should say, ‘Is that really the most healthy thing for me?’ Wouldn’t it be great if I stopped eating this and worked out every day? Imperfection and perfection go so hand in hand, and our dark and our light are so intertwined, that by trying to push the darkness or the so-called negative aspects of our life to the side … we are preventing ourselves from the fullness of life.”
The Bookmobile Taxi Of Tehran
Mehdi Yazdany and Sarvenaz Heraner are no ordinary cabbies: they offer “a mobile reading room and taxi service, complete with chauffeur-librarian.” The cab has more than 40 titles, “from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis to Charles Bukowski’s Pulp. There are also works by Iranian standouts such as Nader Ebrahimi, Zoya Pirzad and Sohrab Sepehri. … When you pay the fare, you can buy a book.”