The company's return to live performance, Verdi's Il trovatore, was to use sets from the Opéra de Monte-Carlo — but they're on a container ship stuck in the giant traffic jam at the Port of Los Angeles. But that won't stop L.A. Opera. - Los Angeles Times
"Prosecutors say Mehrdad Sadigh, a New York antiquities dealer whose Sadigh Gallery has operated for decades in the shadow of the Empire State Building, decided not to go to the trouble of acquiring ancient items. He made (thousands of) bogus copies instead." - The New York Times
The 68-year-old chief conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, formerly music director of the Vancouver and Winnipeg Symphonies and Calgary Opera, begins a five-year contract term on next week and fully assumes the music director title in Sept. 2022. - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Archaeologists using new measuring techniques have analyzed layers of a mineral glaze covering ancient figures in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and the oldest layer appears to date back more than 40 millennia. - ABC (Australia)
"Lynne Halfpenny … insisted the Old Town and the Royal Mile had become overwhelmed with visitors and was seen as a 'bucket list' destination because of Edinburgh's UNESCO designation and not its 'festival city' status." - The Scotsman
Given such limited capacity and the pent-up eagerness of ballet fans, all four performances were fully booked almost as soon as they were announced. - Toronto Star
“A theater is best expressed by the work it initiates. I think it’s really important that we not just bring in the great work but that we make the great work. We haven’t even begun to express the city and its fullness.” - Los Angeles Times
The idea of the urban rambler—the flâneur—as a half-belonging creature took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and adopted a variety of forms in the twentieth. - The New Yorker
What’s changed is not that art fairs have been diminished but that the auction houses built broader sales and marketing platforms in the years leading up to the pandemic, which have turned out to be effective at serving a large new audience for art. - ARTnews
Watts’s drumming was unique. He differed from his peers in the rock drumming pantheon, partly due to being a jazz aficionado, a sensibility that he took to the music of the Stones, and also through his self-contained manner. - The Conversation
The data were collected by an insurance company, Dan Ariely says, but he no longer has records of interactions with it that could reveal where things went awry. “I wish I had a good story,” Ariely told Science. “And I just don’t.” - Science Magazine
"Not one, not two, but three separate traveling immersive exhibitions based on the famed Impressionist's paintings are currently gearing up — and one could be headed to a city near you." - Artnet
Consciousness has long been the preserve of philosophers and priests, poets and artists; now neuroscientists are investigating the mysterious quality and trying to answer the hard question of how consciousness arises in the first place. - The Guardian
Aficionados may love Suite for Toy Piano or Sonatas and Interludes, but mostly folks know only the conceptual piece 4'33" or raucous chance-based works like the one for electronics and household appliances (Variations VII) or Roaratorio (don’t even ask). Those folks should hear the Number Pieces. - The Guardian
The generated voices have gotten more realistic in the age of deepfakes, a technology that uses AI to manipulate content to look and sound deceptively real. - Washington Post
