These modern bastardizations have eighteenth- and nineteenth-century precedent. Singers notoriously inserted their preferred arias into opera scores, however unrelated to the opera at hand. - City Journal
"The arts center will be the centerpiece of a 53-acre park on the Sarasota bayfront. It will have a 2,250-seat main stage theater and a 400-seat flexible performance and event space ... (as well as) a lawn where people can watch movies or performances in the open air." - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Artists do not deserve financial support just for being artists. Selling one’s art is a different story altogether and requires at least 2 parties to be in agreement. Artists are no more deserving of financial support than any other worker, thinker, or creator. - Alan Harrison
"My life totally changed in one day. In the morning, I didn't know I was going to leave Russia. And in the night, I was sitting on the plane. ... I never followed politics. But politics became impossible to ignore, which is why I spoke out against the war." - The Guardian
Brott was a pedestrian involved in a hit-and-run incident. Following the news of his death, social media tributes poured in from the Canadian classical music community, including the Hamilton-based festival that bears his name. - The Globe and Mail (Canada)
The somewhat confusing case — earlier reports that the director had been convicted were later denied — concerns Farhadi's A Hero, an Oscar-nominee this year. A former student claims Farhadi stole the idea for his film from a documentary she made in a workshop he ran in 2014. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
"Hanson, 48, who already has led two orchestras larger than the BSO" — the San Francisco and Houston Symphonies — "will begin his new job April 21. He succeeds Peter Kjome, who announced his resignation as the BSO's president and CEO in the spring of 2021." - The Baltimore Sun
The Jeu de Paume room was built in 1686 for Louis XIV to play the game of the same name, an ancestor of modern tennis. At the start of the French Revolution in 1789, that room — now restored and reopened — was where the National Constituent Assembly was created. - Yahoo! (AFP)
"The world's wealthiest arts institution, the J. Paul Getty Trust, has selected a new president and CEO: New York University Provost Katherine E. Fleming. Fleming will replace longtime chief James Cuno, who has led the institution for more than a decade and will retire this summer." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
The annual report from the American Library Association said that there were 729 challenges to books in school, university, and public libraries in 2021, up from 157 in 2020. Many of those challenges covered more than one book: the total number of individual titles contested was 1,597. - NPR
The Philadelphia Orchestra's release of Price's First and Third Symphonies took Best Orchestral Performance, while Dudamel's Mahler Eighth from Los Angeles won Best Choral Performance and Philip Glass's Akhnaten Best Opera Performance. Among other winners: Jennifer Koh, Emanuel Ax & Yo-Yo Ma, Caroline Shaw's Narrow Sea. - San Francisco Classical Voice
In a long-expected move, Woolfe, who became the Times's classical music editor in 2015, succeeds Anthony Tommasini, who retired as chief classical critic last year. (That Woolfe's title does not include "chief" would seem to indicate that the Times doesn't plan to hire another staff critic.) - The New York Times
Determined to avoid another labor dispute and eager to make the orchestra a pillar of Detroit’s civic revival, she spent the next decade rebuilding the ensemble. The Detroit Symphony, digitally connected and agile, became a model modern ensemble. - The New York Times
The earliest, putty-colored cylinders deteriorate after only a few dozen listens if played on the Edison machines; they crack if you hold them too long in your hand. And because the wax tubes themselves were unlabeled, many of them remain mysteries. - NPR
“Stalin was no psychopath but an emotionally intelligent and feeling intellectual. Indeed, it was the power of his emotional attachment to deeply held beliefs that enabled him to sustain decades of brutal rule." - The New Statesman
