In the current staging, Sweeney's barbershop is above the stage; when he slits a customer's throat, he pulls a lever that sends the victim down a slide into Mrs. Lovett's basement. Under the tag "A Bad Idea Worth Considering," Rebecca Alter points out that slide's underutilized revenue potential. Wheeeeee! - Vulture (MSN)
Kevin Roose: "My column about the experience was probably the most consequential thing I’ll ever write — both in terms of the attention it got … and how the trajectory of A.I. development changed. … It's been a year of growth and excitement in A.I. but a surprisingly tame one." - The New York Times
Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. - Slate
"Jukebox" opera was hardly unknown in centuries past; it was called pasticcio. And while Schubert was a master of vocal music, his operas are rarely revived. (Blame the bad librettos.) So conductor Raphaël Pichon has taken highlights from those operas and put them together with a new story. - The New York Times
"Imagine a small island where, for an entire week, you’re in the company of some of the world’s finest classical musicians. They play almost continuously from 9.30am until bedtime. You’re one of more than 13,500 audience members." Welcome to the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. - The Guardian
"Scaffolding surrounding the spire came down this week, revealing the restored structure in a landmark moment for the cathedral, which was ravaged by a fire in April 2019. The soaring spire, crowned with a cross and golden rooster, peeks out of a dense grid of support beams." - The Washington Post (MSN)
"We need to stop treating museums, theaters and galleries like sacred spaces that exist in some rarefied realm of public life. And we need to start treating them — and funding them — like interstate highways, high-speed internet and other infrastructure projects, using money that’s earmarked to maintain the country’s infrastructure." - The New York Times
"MoMA, which acquired in 1949, received $4 million in compensation for giving it back under an arrangement negotiated by a restitution company that represented the seven heirs." - The New York Times
Can any opera company withstand the blows of the 21st century? “The ongoing crisis in opera parallels a current 'free fall' … in American theater — with low ticket sales, slumping philanthropy and rising costs putting experimental platforms and long-standing institutions alike on indefinite hiatus.” - Washington Post
"The shaggy-haired, high-voltage maestro who served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for almost 30 years, … was widely considered the first Asian conductor to win world renown leading a (symphony) orchestra." - The Washington Post (MSN)
"Several staffers … say there’s an undercurrent of fear and intimidation fostered by domineering bosses whose push to make the station more relevant online — on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok — has affected morale and undermined the radio and TV broadcasting that has been GBH’s bread-and-butter." - The Boston Globe (MSN)
The scroll is one of hundreds, all far too fragile to unroll, from Herculaneum that constitute the only intact library from the ancient world to survive, By using machine-learning to decipher scans of the scroll, the students have won the $700,000 prize offered in the Vesuvius Challenge. - Time
"The film gave me an exposure that I could not have imagined, and I had to catch up with my own fame when the floodgates opened to do countless operas," she later said. After a 25-year singing career, she found happiness as a special-ed teacher in Kentucky. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Spano — currently music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival and School, principal conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and from 2001 to 2021 music director of the Atlanta Symphony — begins an initial three-year term at the WNO in fall 2025. - The Washington Post (MSN)
"Orchestra After 5" concerts begin with a cocktail hour in the Kimmel Center lobby, followed at 6:30 by a one-hour concert with an informal chat afterward. "If the goal was to lure listeners beyond the traditional base," writes Peter Dobrin, "it was a wild success." - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
"The term has come into vogue. It’s also become an explicit rallying cry for some of those taking direct action” - especially against the predations of AI. - The Atlantic
“The malaise that has begun to suffuse TikTok feels systemic, market-driven and also potentially existential, suggesting the end of a flourishing era and the precipice of a wasteland period.” - The New York Times
The story played out after the first gloriously thick ice weekend with increasingly dire warnings on Instagram, over text, and on the Art Shanties’ other official channels: The ice was only getting thinner, so “the artists, wearing life jackets, began dismantling huts one by one.” - The New York Times
In a suprise to no one, one of the American Federation of Musicians' "biggest concerns is the film and TV industry’s transition to streaming, which has significantly altered the way musicians are compensated for their work." - Los Angeles Times
