Visual Arts Torturous Art "It was torture with a creative flair -- build tiny cells that kept prisoners from sleeping, sitting or pacing, and decorate the walls with mind-bending art. These chambers operated during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, and were the work of Communists fighting for the government side as it battled troops under fascist Gen. Francisco Franco. Their existence is a bizarre, little-known footnote to the conflict and is now the focus of historians and artists. Researchers say the Soviet-inspired cells were the size of a walk-in closet, with terra-cotta bricks sticking up from the floor at sharp angles. A cot and a seat attached to the walls teased prisoners with the lure of rest, but tilted so far downward that they were useless." Star Tribune (AP) 03/27/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 5:33 am 'Lost' Goyas To Be Auctioned Two paintings discovered in the home of a wealthy Madrid family have been certified by Spanish art experts as original Goyas, and will be put up for auction shortly. "The auction house admitted it was puzzled there was no record of the paintings but suggested the reason could be because they formed part of a religious triptych - three panels usually hinged together." The works are expected to bring up to 5 million euros ($5.36 million). BBC 03/26/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 4:15 am Is Saddam Holding Historical Treasures Hostage? "Millennia ago, Iraq was the cradle of civilization, hence the concern about its cultural and archaeological sites. Is the U.S. taking sufficient care to spare Iraq's treasures? The laws of warfare make clear that while combatants may not target such sites, if they are used for military purposes they lose their protection." Unfortunately, say US commanders, the Iraqis have are putting military targets next to important archaeological sites. Recently Iraq "placed military equipment and communications equipment next to the 2,000-year-old brick arch of Ctesiphon on the banks of the Tigris River, the world's largest surviving arch from ancient times and the widest single-span arch in the world." OpinionJournal.com 03/27/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 5:35 pm Music Here's Your Trophy, Now Hit The Road The musicians who win the top prizes at major international competitions are, of course, some of the best players in the world. You would think that such prizewinning talents would immediately find themselves with a full schedule of recital dates and solo appearances in the world's top venues. But in fact, most prizewinners quickly find that their careers get only a minimal boost from even the most celebrated competitions. Case in point: Van Cliburn gold medalists Olga Kern and Stanislav Ioudenitch, currently touring such classical music meccas as, um, Kansas City. Kansas City Star 03/23/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 6:07 am Musicians Avoiding America Cancellations are coming in from European musicians and ensembles wary of performing in America in the midst of a globally unpopular invasion of Iraq. Last week, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu cancelled an appearance at the Met Opera, and this week, the Rotterdam Philharmonic called off a major U.S. tour, which would have included a stop at Carnegie Hall. Some of the performers have cited security concerns - others have merely said that they don't wish to be in America while the war is going on. The New York Times (first item) 03/27/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 5:42 am Finally, Legal MP3s! Ever since the record industry began cracking down on illegal file-trading services like the now-defunct Napster, consumers looking for a legal way to download music online have been stymied by an industry which seemed more interested in stonewalling the digital music movement for as long as possible than in finding a way to turn the new technology into profit. Now, a new site called MusicNow has been launched, aimed at 30-to-50-year-olds who want digital music, and won't mind paying for it. The fees are reasonable - $10 a month for unlimited downloads, and 99 cents for a single song - and the company behind the site hopes it will finally begin to attract music consumers with money to spend. Wired 03/27/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 4:28 am Truly Cerebral Music "Hook a whole bunch of brains up to a computer, capture and play the sounds they make, and you get, well, not quite music, but certainly some interesting noise. That's exactly what happened at the Cyborg Echoes Deconcert in Toronto over the weekend. The concert was billed as a participatory event, and it certainly was: Audience members' brains were scanned, the scans were transformed into sounds, mixed with a solid little backbeat from some heart scans, combined and played back to create Music in the Key of EEG." Wired 03/27/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 4:25 am Scotland - Jazz Incubator? Scotland has long made a contribution to jazz out of all proportion to its size. The list of famous players runs across generations and genres. But the 1990s were a particularly invigorating period for Scottish jazz. 'This is a small scene. It doesn't have the economic power to keep buying American tours. What's been appreciated here in recent years, and what is becoming apparent inside and outside Scotland now, is that we're growing our own stars'." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 7:05 pm Covent Garden To Stage Its First Musical London's Royal Opera House, out to prove it is more populist than in the past, has scheduled its first musical for the main stage: Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Music director Antonio Pappano "said he wanted to open the windows ... 'I am not interested in this old argument about what is opera and what is musical theatre. Often it's so intense and serious here, but it is OK for this opera house to have fun too'." The Guardian (UK) 03/27/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 7:02 pm Dream Team Orchestra Many conductors, as they travel 'round the world, play games of Dream Team - picking the best players from top orchestras and imagining how the all-star orchestra would sound. Mostly, it's an excercise of imagination. But Claudio Abbado, "presiding at this summer's Lucerne Festival, has cherry-picked players from symphony and chamber orchestras, string quartets and solo rosters to form an ensemble that will be the envy of Salzburg and a thumb in the eye for the Berlin Philharmonic, from whom Abbado parted company last year. Such dreams can come true only at festival time. In permanent orchestras, maestros get along with tenured musicians of uneven temperament and with the human clay thrown up at auditions." London Evening Standard 0326/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 5:47 pm Arts Issues Ontario Looks For Arts Funding Increase Arts funding may be getting slashed, burned, and beaten into the ground as the U.S. struggles with a dismal economy, but in Ontario, arts advocates are expecting a jump in cultural spending as the provincial government releases its budget today. "In 1995, the council's $42 million budget was cut dramatically by $25 million, where it has hovered since," but the federal and provincial governments have shown a willingness in recent years to jump in and bail out struggling arts groups. An increase in arts funding would have the potential to reduce the number of struggling groups, and thus, the number of needed bailouts. Toronto Star 03/27/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 5:56 am Nice Timing On the same day that Colorado arts advocates had scheduled a special day of lobbying on behalf of their profession, the joint budget committee the Colorado legislature voted to completely eliminate public funding for the arts. If the plan passes in the full legislature, Colorado would join Oregon and New Jersey in becoming the only states to zero out cultural funding. (None of those states has yet finalized its decision to kill the funding.) Colorado already ranks dead last in the nation in per capita arts spending. The proposed cuts would eliminate about $1.5 million in arts spending. Denver Post 03/26/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 5:06 am Screen Play The Royal Opera House will set up screens around the country this summer and broadcast performances out on the streets. "Productions by the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet will be beamed to outside screens in Sheffield, Liverpool, Gateshead, Belfast and London's Canary Wharf. It is part of an initiative to reach people who would not normally watch ballet or opera." BBC 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 6:06 pm New York City To Cut City Cultural Spending? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's preliminary 2004 budget calls for a cut of 17 percent from the proposed budget for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. "The city's Independent Budget Office - in its March analysis of the mayor's preliminary budget - is comparing the proposed 2004 funding to the June 2002 financial plan, which had set the DCA budget at $123.4 million. The new budget would be $102.5 million. Backstage 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 6:00 pm People Iraqi Blogger Goes Silent The weblogger known as "Salam Pax" has a lot of readers worried for him. "For months, the mysterious Blogger of Baghdad, whose pseudonym translates as 'peace' in Arabic and Latin - and who is suspected by some of being a secret agent or a hacker - had chronicled the minutiae of life in a city on the edge of war... On Friday, Pax - a gay man in a repressive society, an atheist in a Muslim land, a lover of democracy but a hater of war - filed a worried dispatch as he awaited the first shock-and-awe assault on the city he cherishes." A short time later, the blog, one of the most widely-read on the web, went dark. So far, no one seems to know if Pax is dead or alive, free or imprisoned, or if he ever really existed at all. Philadelphia Inquirer 03/27/03 Posted: 03/27/2003 5:52 am Detective Fiction By Day, Opera By Night By day Donna Leon writes detective novels - 12 so far - and succesful thrillers at that. Successful enough, anyway, to fund her true passion, running a baroque opera company. By night she runs an opera company, largely funded from her life of crime. Not many of her readers know this, but it won't surprise them. Opera seeps into her books - their plots, their atmosphere - like dripping blood. Each one comes prefaced by a few lines of Mozartian libretto - usually from Cosi fan tutte, which for some reason seems to lend itself to the mechanics of murder-mystery even though it's an opera in which no one actually dies." The Telegraph (UK) 03/27/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 7:19 pm Theatre Broadway Box Office Steady During The War During the 1991 Gulf War, business on Broadway faltered as people stayed home. That hasn't happened so far with the Iraq war. Last week "business climbed primarily for musicals, with two of the most popular, 'Hairspray' and 'The Lion King,' selling out and grossing over $1 million each. There were sturdy ticket sales for such shows as 'The Producers,' 'Mamma Mia!' and 'Chicago'. Although overall ticket sales were off from a year ago, $12.9 million compared to $14.2 million in 2002, there were more shows playing last year - 31 shows compared to 27 productions last week." Nando Times (AP) 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 6:40 pm Publishing Dante - Burn Baby Burn "We're living in a golden age of Dante translation. Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky touched it off when he published an excellent, widely acclaimed verse translation of the Inferno in 1995. In just the last year, five new editions of the Inferno have appeared, including a reprint of Longfellow's landmark version. Still more surprising, there are three new translations of the much less popular Purgatorio, the second of the Comedy's three 'canticles.' And the torrent doesn't stop there." Slate 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 6:34 pm Media How Do You Make The Arts Work On TV? "There is a recognition that the arts, especially on BBC1, have been underserved. Accordingly, the holy grail for the BBC seems to be programmes that bring in a mass audience while simultaneously appealing to aficionados." But how to accomplish it? "It means doing more and doing it bolder; it means resting tired formats, and indeed tired faces. Those involved in the live arts would attest to the fact that if you want to make an impact, if you want to transport and transform people, then you have to take real risks. And that's what art is all about." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 7:12 pm Keepin' It Real - A Good Time For Documentaries? Traditionally, documentaries have been small business. But will Michael Moore's success at the Oscars, turn things around? According to one theory, "the studios are making more and more popcorn, merchandisable films - package films with no core. But there's an audience who want to see movies about the real world who only get the opportunity to do that when they see documentaries. In theory, then, this ought to be a golden moment for documentary makers in the US." The Guardian (UK) 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 7:09 pm A History Of Hollywood Activism (Or Lack Thereof) Hollywood seems political (or at least some in Hollywood seem so). But Tinseltown has a long history of dancing around political controversy while trying to do business... Village Voice 03/25/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 5:31 pm Dance Independent Streak? Mason's New Face On The Royal Ballet Monica Mason, the Royal Ballet's new director, has a tough job, no matter how she does it. "A director has to juggle the old or 'heritage' repertoire with the new; maintain the 20th-century classics as well as the 19th-century ones; import foreign successes and support indigenous efforts; and of course share out space between Ashton and MacMillan. No matter how the portions are carved out, many people in many places will be seriously displeased. Mason looks likely to be the safe consolidator, the steadying hand after the squalls of the Stretton regime. After seeking to blow new air into the Royal Ballet by appointing Stretton, the ROH Board then did a frightened U-turn by scurrying back to the old guard with Mason." The Independent (UK) 03/26/03 Posted: 03/26/2003 6:50 pm