Said the former music director of Chicago Opera Theater, “I want to be sure that my children grow up feeling like they can always express themselves freely. I want my children to live in a society that really takes care of its people, ... that really values things like the arts (and) education.” - WBEZ (Chicago)
Following an open letter signed by nearly 200 staffers — a letter which explicitly referenced the house’s recent rental of its staging of Turandot to the same company — the Royal Ballet and Opera has cancelled the planned rental of its production of Tosca to the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. - The Guardian
“It wasn’t so much that we’d failed to replicate (the study’s) famous longitudinal results. It was more that our study confirmed a nagging message that the field is still resistant to accepting: there are no childhood skills that are silver bullets.” - Psyche
Julia Whelan: “The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that’s how many books you have to do when you’re first starting out to keep your head above water. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don’t get royalties.” - AP
Christopher Guest: “I can do a voice, but Sellers was embedded in those characters, and that commitment made it very different.” Michael McKean: “I remember reading Being There and then seeing the film and thinking: he gets this character better than Jerzy Kosinski did.” - The Guardian
Lily Hyde: “They have appeared in contemporary ballets, such as Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games and Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, but are by no means at the heart of the narrative. … I have concluded that there is not one problem responsible for this imbalance – there are several.” - Gramilano (Milan)
“While the whereabouts of these gold treasures — three Dracian bracelets dating from 50 B.C.E. and the 2,500-year-old Cotofenesti helmet — remain unknown, Dutch prosecutors say that evidence gathered from wiretapped conversations suggests they have not yet been melted down.” - Artnet
“The current crisis in China is a result of corporate backers tightening their budgets, consumers curtailing their discretionary spending, and rising costs, people working at the museums tell the Post.” - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Ben Davis: “It’s smug provocation. And there’s no particular love for classic art here; the aesthetic sensibility is totally internet-brained. These specific paintings are picked because they are mildly to very cartoonish, so that holding them up as a sincere image of the past will get people riled up.” - Artnet
Constantine Orbelian, now both Music Director and Executive Director: “The main thing for me at this point is getting a home. ... I believe that without a home, it’s hard to put stuff here and there. And once we find it, one of my big focuses will be doing operas for children.” - OperaWire
“Through a complicated process, Three Bone Theatre received the remaining $13,000 from its three-year, $20,000 grant to help put on a trilogy of plays that retell classic Greek tragedies from a modern Latino and Chicano perspective. The group already had spent approximately $7,000 of the grant when the cuts came down.” - The Charlotte Observer (Yahoo!)
“The chandeliers are wood-and-metal spheres that have been called ‘sputniks’ ever since the Met opened in 1966. Legend has it that a prototype was constructed with toothpicks and a potato.” - The New York Times
But hey, one currently hard-up business might benefit: "If anything sends viewers back to the cineplex, it will be ads for depression meds in the middle of a rom-com or a sophisticated chase scene." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“Anderson’s seemingly ditsy, bombshell character was anything but, and her performance as Jennifer showed that looks and smarts could go together.” - The New York Times
“After a great loss, some people find themselves communing with nature, at the seaside or deep in a forest. Others turn to spirituality, toward a temple or church. Me? I’d come to grieve with the Muppets.” - The Atlantic
