“The shift [to streamed performances during the lockdowns] has raised questions about whether audiences will return to theaters in the same numbers as before, and whether a blend of online and in-person viewing will become the new norm. … To find out how the pandemic might affect Europe’s theater scenes, both large and small, we spoke with theatergoers in seven different countries.” (Said one, “I couldn’t get into the theaters’ digital offerings. It’s not theater, it’s evidence of theater.”) – The New York Times
Musée Rodin In Paris May Be Ordered To Release 3D Scans Of Sculptures
The museum has 3D scans of its holdings but is extremely reluctant to release them to the public, since the institution supports itself by selling its own reproductions of Rodin’s works. Those works, however, are legally the property of the French state, and thus should be subject to freedom of information laws. So an American fabricator and activist, Cosmo Wenman, has sued for copies of the scans. And what will he do with them if he wins? “I would love to show off my commercial digital-to-bronze capabilities by using the Musée Rodin’s scans to produce my own bronze replicas at far higher quality than the museum’s own gift shop offerings.” – The Art Newspaper
Patrick Dupond, Star And Director Of Paris Opera Ballet, Dead At 61
He entered the company’s school at age 10, joined the company at 16 and was an étoile at 21. He became one of the company’s most popular stars, but fell out with his tempestuous boss, Rudolf Nureyev, and left in 1985. In 1990, aged 30, he became Nureyev’s successor; he added contemporary works to the repertoire and invited leading contemporary dance companies (e.g., Graham, Ailey, Bausch, de Keersmaeker) onto the Opéra’s august stage. But, by 1997, he was again clashing with his bosses, and he was fired for, in his words, “insubordination and indiscipline.” (He had accepted an invitation to sit on the jury at Cannes without the bosses’ permission.) In 2017, he and collaborator Leïla Da Rocha founded a new company and school, White Eagle Dance, in Bordeaux; at the time, he made waves by announcing that “As far as I’m concerned, homosexuality was an error” and he had found love with Da Rocha. – Gramilano (Milan)
Read Nabokov’s Long-Lost Superman Poem, Now In Print At Last
“The Man of To-morrow’s Lament” — written as the superhero’s internal monologue as he walks through the city with Lois Lane, ruing that they can never have children together — was submitted to, and rejected by, The New Yorker in the summer of 1942 and then disappeared. – Times Literary Supplement (UK)