“In a new Reddit AMA with Darren Aronofsky, the director was asked by a commenter named chickenmagic (of course) if he considered staging his new movie as a play, to which he responded, ‘johan johansson and i are thinking about turning it into an opera.'” (Jóhannsson composed the score for the film.) This could make sense – indeed (as some have observed), it could make more sense than the movie does.
The Rapid Decline Of Americans Who Like To Cook (What’s That About?)
Although many people don’t realize it yet, grocery shopping and cooking are in a long-term decline. They are shifting from a mass category, based on a daily activity, to a niche activity that a few people do only some of the time. Only 10% of consumers now love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it. That means that the percentage of Americans who really love to cook has dropped by about one-third in a fairly short period of time.
America’s Great Dictionary Of Regional Dialects To Shut Down
The six-volume-plus-online-updates Dictionary of American Regional English, the only project of its type based on in-person field research, was supported largely by grants from the likes of the NEH and the National Science Foundation. “The institutional donors pretty much felt that they did their job to get the dictionary to ‘Z.’ The publicity from the completion of the main text led to an influx of enough money to finish Volume VI, which included maps and indices, but that was it. In the last few years, the staff applied for additional grants to update and add new entries; these failed to materialize.” Jesse Sheidlower offers a eulogy.
Joffrey Ballet To Move Into Chicago’s Lyric Opera House
Just as the two companies have opened their first major collaboration, “the Joffrey Ballet and Lyric Opera of Chicago announced Friday that the dance company will move its season residencies from the Auditorium Theatre to the Lyric Opera House, beginning in fall 2020.”
Opera Australia Threatened With Fines For Hiring Too Many Foreign Singers
In the perpetual tug-of-war between hiring the best artists available from anywhere and helping Australian singers make a living in their home country, the balance has swung to the former, with the number of non-Australians in leading roles in the company having tripled over the past seven years. So a government report has recommended docking funding for Opera Australia by up to $200,000 if it doesn’t maintain an “appropriate balance” of Australian and foreign singers.
The Man Who Created ‘Veep’ Explains The Joys Of Opera (Including Regie)
“Opera is the coming together of music, theatre, design, people and coughing in the greatest synthesis of art capable of collapsing at the beep of a watch alarm. … As the sounds soar and mingle perfectly, the evening makes sense, the stupidity is forgotten and the burglars and the rain and the hundred cars outside and the fight 40 yards across the street, and then someone sneezes, which is when, somewhere in the middle of the second act, in a radical switch to the American midwest, we return to a stage full of big people and papier-mâché cacti.”
‘#StopMorganLie’ – Morgan Freeman Has Become Russia’s New Favorite Piñata
Kyle Swenson reports on “the Russian reaction that greeted a two-minute online video [Freeman] recorded recently for a group hoping to keep alive concerns over Kremlin meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Freeman is being portrayed as a tool of the U.S. establishment trying to bring down Trump” – and as everything from a silly, high-strung thespian to a marijuana-addled old man to someone with a “Messianic complex.”
Germany Will Spend €400 Million To Renovate Sanssouci And Charlottenburg Palaces
“The funding through to 2030 is destined for museum sites including the former royal palace at Charlottenburg in Berlin, Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci complex in Potsdam and the Cecilienhof palace … Priorities include renovating dilapidated buildings and parks, increasing fire precautions and security, improving depots and working spaces, and upgrading services for visitors.”
Our Music Might Have Become Post-Genre. But Listeners?
Post-genre thinking seeks to move away from objective methods of characterizing music, instead focusing on a more subjective method within which music is viewed piece by piece with an emphasis on the intention and background of the composer. If a composer has no intent of writing within the “classical” genre label, then attempting to understand the piece through a classical lens is irrelevant. But what about the listener? There is no doubt that all listeners have pre-existing connotations surrounding certain types of sounds. Realistically, because we have discussed music in terms of these genre constructions for so long, a listener’s experience is likely to naturally include elements of: “This moment in this piece of music reminds me of X genre, which makes me think of Y connotation.”
A Botched Book Review Prompts Consternation At (And About) The NY Times
Many journalists and media observers have sympathized with Grigoriadis, who appears to have suffered an authors’ worst nightmare—she spent years writing a book only to sustain an unfair skewering at the hands of a reviewer who didn’t appear to fully comprehend the work. But the review of Blurred Lines has itself set off a drama within the halls of the Times, where the hand-wringing this week has been considerable, sources there told me. “It’s being talked about a whole lot,” said one. Another said, “It’s sloppiness, and also a question of whether or not the public response was adequate. It’s a significant error.”
Myrna Lamb, Feminist Playwright Lambasted By Male Critics, Has Died At 87
Her first musical, “Mod Donna,” had its opening at the Public in 1970. One Lamb supporter: “I was at opening night with my then-boyfriend, … a deceptively mild-mannered man who rose out of his chair at the curtain and began to shout that feminism was a sham and that he would tell the awful truth about what wretched liars, manipulators, fakes and so on we in the movement were. I had never seen him in such a rage. Many men in the audience around us were nodding approval at his outburst.”
What’s The Point Of Our (Illusory) Sense Of Agency, Anyway?
What one neuropsychology professor thinks: “If our experience of action doesn’t really affect what we do in the moment, then what is it for? Why have it? Contrary to what many people believe, I think agency is only relevant to what happens after we act – when we try to justify and explain ourselves to each other.”
Are Artists About To Get Kicked Out Of Bushwick By A Wave Of Development?
Many people see the artists as the first wave of development and gentrification, of course. “Tensions have simmered for much of the past decade between Bushwick’s longtime Latino and African American residents and artists who moved into the area. But as more people discover the neighborhood’s charms, investors pour money into projects that increase property values and eventually force long-time residents and artists to leave for good.”
Ritha Devi, A ‘Consummate Actress’ Who Brought Indian Classical Dance To The U.S., Has Died At 92
She specialized in Odissi, a form of temple dance from the eastern Indian state of Odisha. “By the 1940s and ’50s, Odissi had fallen out of favor in India. But Ms. Devi, who began studying it in 1964, helped revive it through worldwide tours in the 1970s and as a professor in New York University’s dance department from 1972 to 1982.”
Where Are All Of The Rural Gay Poets?
Obviously they’ve all moved to cities, right? But for real: Does “the omission of gay voices in [the] rural canon gesture toward a more pointed claim, that the ‘moral glory’ of the American countryside somehow prevented, or at least denied, the existence of gay men and women”?
José Carreras, The Third Tenor In The Three Tenors’ Juggernaut, Exits The Stage
Carreras was on his way to the heights of opera stardom when he was struck by leukemia – but a comeback concert with friends and fellow tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo turned him into a massive crossover star. Now he’s preparing to sing his final concert at Carnegie Hall.
Inside The Massive, Two-Year Effort To Save, And Restore, Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’
The Huntington’s senior paintings conservator, Christina O’Connell, has a plan. “The Blue Boy will be reframed and returned to the portrait gallery on November 1. It will remain there for 10 months while O’Connell processes reams of data and formulates her treatment plan. Then the painting will come down for another several months of treatment. Part of this work will be done in the lab, but as much as possible will be completed in a cordoned-off area of the portrait gallery, in full view of the visiting public.”
Cressida Pollock, Who Steered The English National Opera Through Its Troubles, Will Step Down
That righting came at a cost – cutting the number of operas, losing a music director, dealing with a threatened strike by the chorus – but the young executive director leaves the ENO on a much more stable financial footing, with new artistic leadership coming in.
Can The Zeitz Museum Become The Tate Modern Of South Africa?
Sure, if by that you mean where the world’s wealthy come to play. “At its media preview last Friday, two of the first questions from South African journalists raised awkward points about Cape Town’s reputation as an unequal and inaccessible playground for the wealthy. The city is arguably one of the least African cities on the continent. And its apartheid geography has persisted, with blacks and whites still largely in their separate and unequal enclaves.”
Marian Horosko, Dancer And Historian Of Dance, Has Died At 92
The former editor of Dance Magazine, Horosko “was the only dancer who carried an old-fashioned typewriter with her on tour.”
Finally, We’re In The Golden Age Of Slutty Cinema
Now (just look at Girls’ Trip and Daphne) is the time for women who “are neither the victims of, nor inertly, Sleeping-Beauty-wise, waiting to be enlivened by, male desire.”
EU Ranks Creative Cities. Edinburgh Tops List
“Selected cities in 28 European Union (EU) countries plus Norway and Switzerland have been ranked in a new report and online tool called the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor. It uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative studies to give a comparative assessment of the cities’ levels of engagement with culture and creativity.”
A Year Later, Washington’s African American Museum Is Still An Audience Hit
“It remains one of the hottest tickets in town, it is an essential stop for out-of-town tourists, and it has succeeded in attracting a diverse, engaged, multicultural and international audience. It has also changed the center of gravity on the Mall, drawing crowds to its symbolic nodal point, where the Washington Monument connects the White House and Jefferson Memorial to the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial. There is an energy along 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW that feels new, and welcome, in the city.”
Opera Takes Over Philadelphia – And It’s A Hit
“Opera Philadelphia has been planning this for a couple of years: Now, the O17 festival has begun, turning the city into a giant opera stage for 12 days. The company is striking a huge blow for the idea that arts organizations do better to add new, exciting things than to tread with financial caution. The festival is one of the most enjoyable additions to the fall calendar in years; it’s attracting opera fans from all over; and so far, it looks like a success.”
Washington National Opera Lands A Star General Director
It is indeed a major step for Washington; Timothy O’Leary is one of opera’s leading lights. Having taken over in St. Louis when he was only 33, he has led that company — one of America’s best summer festivals — with notable strength, at once building its artistic profile with an interesting array of work and securing its finances.