Ideas Can Tragedy Live In Today's World? There was a time when tragedy meant something. Now it describes missteps of the most trivial nature. On the other hand - have critics elevated notions of classic tragedy too high? "It is the critics who have disdained modern life's suitability for the tragic mode, and have made an aesthetic virtue out of suffering in the past, persuading themselves that what was horrible then can be metaphysically pleasing now and that present-day suffering is undignified and uninteresting. Past pain is thus sanitised while that of the present is dismissed as beneath attention - a useful strategy for those who have lived through the bloodiest century in human history and would prefer not to look at it too closely." The Guardian (UK) 04/01/03 Visual Arts Capitol Site For Black History Museum? A presidential commission recommends building the new Black History Museum on a Washington DC site near the Capitol. "As we did our town hall meetings around the country, we found that the overwhelming sentiment and expressions were that the museum should be on the Mall, should be associated and affiliated with the Smithsonian, and it should tell the whole story of African American history in this country from slavery to modern times. This advance in the development of the museum does not guarantee that it will be built. The backers of the project will have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from public and private sources. There are also legislative hurdles. But the recommendation by the presidential commission is an important step and gives supporters a more specific idea to sell." Washington Post 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 7:57 am Music Carnegie Hall's New Hall Carnegie is opening a new, $100 million 644-seat third concert hall, underneath its main auditorium. "The hall is preparing to open at a difficult period for the arts, when the weak economy has hurt charitable giving and advance ticket sales. Indeed, Carnegie Hall delayed Zankel Hall's opening for a year because of the difficult economic climate after the terrorist attacks. Budgeted at $50 million, the new hall eventually cost twice that; all the money has been raised." The New York Times 04/03/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 10:35 pm Getting Down With Classical Music "Recently, there have been signs all over the place that the wall between classical and rock music is finally beginning to crumble. If much of this development is due to the rise of a better class of rockers who have warmed up to Olivier Messiaen, a lot of it is also owed to an eagerness by young classical musicians to get down and lighten up. Not surprisingly, the classical prime movers are two California maestros — [LA Philharmonic conductor Esa-Pekka] Salonen in Los Angeles and his counterpart with the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas—and the Golden State’s unofficial composer in residence, John Adams." New York Observer 04/02/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 5:43 pm Paris Opera Pulls Newspaper Ads Over Bad Reviews The Paris Opera has been getting bad reviews from critics of the newspaper Le Monde. So the company has pulled its advertising from the paper. "Le Monde appreciates almost none of our productions, with its critics describing the Opera's current productions as 'old-fashioned' and lacking all spirit of innovation. In these conditions it would be inhuman to impose paid advertisements on Le Monde inviting the public to see shows it condemns so forcefully." Expatica 04/02/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 4:23 pm Arts Issues LA's Uber-Underground "L.A.'s notoriously fragmented underground nightlife is coagulating more often lately, producing a new category, an über-category, if you will, of event where everyone - the Punks, the Desert People, the Anthropologists, the Beat Junkies and the Hip-Hop Kids and Artists - can find something." Los Angeles Times 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 6:51 am Ticket Sales Down In Denver Sales of tickets for Colorado Ballet are down so much since the war began that the company has cancelled fiver performances. Elsewhere in Denver the impact is mixed... Denver Post 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 6:23 am Gioia's Plan For The NEA New NEA chairman Daniel Gioia is out talking about how he intends to strengthen the National Endowment for the Arts. "I go back to the original vision, which was to foster excellence in the arts and to bring art to all Americans. This doesn't seem to me a controversial mission. The average American wants art in their communities and their schools. It's not a program of the left or the right. It's mainstream American opinion. One of the major needs is to build a public consensus for the support of art and arts education, and we're going to do that by building a kind of inclusive coalition, by refusing to polarize." Boston Globe 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 5:49 am People Lessons From L'affaire Quincy Troupe Quincy Troupe's fall from his position at the University of California, San Diego after he lied on his resume "raises questions about whether academic credentials really matter in certain fields, like poetry and art. Should one lie ruin someone's credibility and career? Some say there's no question that it should. Plagiarism, faking academic credentials, stealing research - all deal a serious blow to academic integrity, and a high price must be exacted. Mr. Troupe is hardly the first professor or college administrator to be caught fabricating his résumé." Chronicle of Higher Education 04/04/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 5:57 pm Theatre The Broadway Producer Who Made It Broadway producer Cy Feuer's memoir of life in the theatre is the classic American story. It's an old - and compelling - message: "This is America, where any kid can become president, or at least producer of "Guys and Dolls," "Can-Can," "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and "Cabaret." That's what Cy Feuer did." Washington Post 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 7:52 am Seattle's ACT Theatre Raises Half Of The Money Needed To Stay Open Seattle's ACT Theatre, which declared an emergency and said it would close if it wasn't able to raise $1.5 million, says it has raised half the money. "The theater has received pledges of $750,000 out of the $1.5 million needed to keep the organization going. That amount includes gifts of $5,000 to $100,000 from 15 individual donors, all Seattle-area residents. "We're cautiously optimistic about making our goal of raising the full $1.5 million by April 15. We've approached people in a very targeted way and have actually heard only one 'no.' Everybody else has said yes'." Seattle Times 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 7:47 am Boston Theatre Box Office Down Since War War is not good for Boston theatre. "Since the fighting started, business is bad, as bad as it was after Sept. 11. People are afraid. They just want to go home now. Indeed, there is a palpable sense of malaise at Greater Boston theaters and concert halls this spring, say local presenters, producers, and performers. 'It's very hard to get people out of the house to see anything but light entertainment at this time, and I can't say I entirely blame them'." Boston Globe 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 5:43 am Publishing Classics: Where The Money Is "Measured against a best seller in its first flush, sales of any classic book are piddling, of course (unless the classic has just been made into a blockbuster movie, in which case all bets are off). But the overall sales picture resembles the proverbial tortoise-and-hare scenario: As the race goes on, the classics win out. This may seem intuitive; but what's surprising is that often the race doesn't have to go on long at all." Slate 04/02/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 3:10 pm Media Radio Industry Survey: Americans Happy With Radio Programming The American radio industry, working to get Congress to relax rules on ownership even more, releases a study that says most Americans like the radio they get now, proving, the industry says, that ownership consolidation hasn't harmed programming. "Among 1,203 surveyed adults, says Zogby, 81% are satisfied with their local radio. A third of poll respondents reportedly said there is more diversity now than there was five years ago, while 40% said they hear about the same and 17% said there is less." New York Daily News 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 7:03 am TV - More Choice Leads To Shorter Attention Spans "Today's teens are growing up in a far more varied and alluring entertainment environment than previous generations - a world offering endless video games, the Internet and hundreds of cable channels. They're used to getting what they want when they want it. So they're impatient. They move around a lot. They have short attention spans." Chicago Tribune 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 5:56 am Parlor Tricks - Attention For The Wrong Reason Aleksandr Sokurov's one-take movie "Russian Ark" at the Hermitage Museum is getting all sorts of attention for all sorts of the wrong reason, writes Nigel Andrews. "The whole world loves useless virtuosity. Masterpieces come 10 a penny, but building the Taj Mahal with matchsticks - that's real achievement. Without its history-making the single-take 'Russian Ark' would be a routine Sokurov essay in narcoleptic expressionism. Now he has accepted a challenge to make the Great Russian Movie and the result is fascinating, maddening, boring and hypnotic, in any adjectival order you want." Financial Times 04/03/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 4:31 pm Dance Tharp On The Move Twyla Tharp is busy these days with several projects at once. But, she tells Frank Rizzo, "Multi-tasking is not healthy. Nor is it ultimately productive. I don't look at [what I do] as multi-tasking. I look at it as quick shifts of gear." Does she miss having a home base to work out of? "What is this word `home' you keep using?" It would be a lovely thing, but I never had a home. I'm basically still moving from studio to studio..." Hartford Courant 04/03/03 Posted: 04/03/2003 6:33 am Where Is Mark Morris Heading? A series of Mark Morris performances leaves Robert Gottlieb wondering which direction the choreographer is headed. Morris "seems to have reached a difficult moment in his creative life. It’s clear now that he hopes to absorb everything in the universe, but his response to his latest interests is less full and resonating than his response in his early years to the work of Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Monteverdi. Their music, you feel, is where he really lives. Morris is now at the age Balanchine was when New York City Ballet came into existence, with Apollo, Serenade, Concerto Barocco, Symphony in C behind him and 35 years of masterpieces to go." Morris "throws himself at new enthusiasms, digests them, and moves on. This season suggests, at least to me, that he doesn’t yet know what he’s moving on to. He’s as fecund as ever, and as fluent, but not as focused." New York Observer 04/02/03 Posted: 04/02/2003 5:24 pm