“When the Chevalier d’Eon left France in 1762, it was as a diplomat, a spy in the French king’s service, a Dragoon captain, and a man. When he returned in July 1777, at the age of 49, it was as a celebrity, a writer, an intellectual, and a woman – according to a declaration by the government of France. What happened? And why?”
Russian Prude Complains About Replica Of Michelangelo’s ‘David’, Show Organizers Respond With Public ‘Dress David!’ Competition
A St. Petersburg woman complained to city officials that the statue, erected outside a local exhibition on Michelangelo, “spoils the city’s historic appearance and warps children’s souls.” In response, the public has been invited to submit sartorial suggestions, with online voting to select the best idea.
What Does It Matter What People Wear To The Theatre?
“Theater today is ridiculously inaccessible as it is, and to tell people they have to dress a certain way to participate is unfair.”
Before HD: When The Met Brought Opera To America By Touring America
“From 1883, the year the Metropolitan Opera was founded, until 1986, the company went on extensive annual tours across the United States with occasional excursions abroad. … The scale of the Met tour, with orchestra, chorus, soloists, scenery and costumes, was massive. The typical mode of transportation was by train. In the first season, the company began with 13 performances in Boston from a repertory of 10 different operas as well as a concert.”
Big 1,900-Year-Old Mosaic Of Hercules’s Labors Uncovered In Cyprus
“Measuring a whopping 62 by 23 feet, the mosaic’s faded tiles appear to be part of what was once a baths complex … The mosaic has suffered some damage, but you can still make out hints of the challenging tasks Hercules had to perform as a kind of penance after murdering his wife and children.”
Remember What It Was Like To Shop For Classical Records In Stores?
“Sic transit gloria disci.” Mark Obert-Thorn reminisces about the unexpected finds, the in-store appearances by musicians, the passionate sales clerks, and the discussions with other customers in what was, not so long ago, one of the best cities for classical record shopping in the country.
Why ‘Motown, The Musical’ Was Such A Big Lost Opportunity
“In the realm of ‘jukebox’ musicals, it is king, drawing from a plethora of baby-boomer smash hits created by such legendary groups as the Supremes, Temptations, the Jackson Five, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Throw in Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, and the potential is limitless.” The problem? The man behind it all.
What Pizza Delivery Big Data Tells Us About Ourselves
“During O.J. Simpson’s famous, slow-speed police chase in the summer of ’94, Domino’s Pizza reported record-breaking pizza sales. (According to the same company, not a single person in the entire country ordered a pizza from them during the five minutes the Simpson verdict was read out the following year.)”
How To Make A Hit? Collaborate! (Outside Your Genre)
“Benefiting from the cross-pollination of regions and genres, these collaborations can introduce the featured artists to new audiences, with rappers and crooners crossing over among dance-pop aficionados. But the producers are pulling the strings and rightly taking much of the credit.”
Computer Generated Animation And The Opera Stage
“CGA has long been vivid enough to create its own world. But such effects have now attained a fluidity persuasive enough to behave like cinema.”
How To Thin The Herd Of Your Books (And No, Not By Moving To E-Books)
“If you read a book from your shelves and dislike it, then this is a good day for you: now you can ditch it. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up strenuously disliking a book by an until-now untried author whose work you have in multiplicity.”
How Misty Copeland Became A Megabrand
“She’s hoping that her success will create ‘a new structure for how dancers are treated.'”
Why Is Buying Concert (Or Hamilton) Tickets Such A Rigged System?
And what if the extremes are what the price actually *should* be?
The Museum Of Ice Cream Has Sold Out
“In one room dedicated to ice cream cones, the wall is covered in vague, uncredited trivia — ‘cones damaged during production are further ground down into animal feed’ — and guests can suck on a helium-filled balloon made of heated sugar.”
The Matriarch Of Regional Theatre
“Zelda Fichandler, a seminal figure in the regional theater movement who led Arena Stage in Washington for 41 years, producing more than 400 shows and directing more than 50 for a company that helped spur the growth of professional theater around the country and became its centerpiece in the nation’s capital, died on Friday at her home in Washington.”
A Musician Who Found Wild Success In Her 40s – And Cancer Soon After
“While major labels repeatedly shunned the singer as over the hill and ‘too dark,’ she finally found a perfect partner, and a breakthrough, via the fledgling indie Daptone Records, which specializes in reanimating the vintage sounds of soul, funk and Latin music”
How A Dancer Burned Up The Ranks In Canada
“Imagine the most dashing and magnanimous princes of 19th-century literature and you’ll conjure an idea of his magnetic presence as a performer.”
What’s The World’s Responsibility When Languages Disappear?
“While some languages survive by transplanting their speakers to more hospitable locations—New York City is especially fertile, hosting communities who languages have effectively become extinct in their places of origin—others don’t have the option of finding a home elsewhere.”
Museums Plus Activist Art Equals What, Exactly
Elizabeth Sackler: “This is a problem among museums because art is intrinsically a form of social activism. What would we give, [Holland Carter] asks, to have a museum that integrated its art and its history with its people and its morals? My response is that we don’t have to give a king’s ransom for that. We have that at the Brooklyn Museum.”
Asian American Actors Are Not Into Matt Damon In A Movie About The Great Wall Of China
“Constance Wu, a star of the comedy show Fresh off the Boat, posted a statement on Twitter that lambasted the ‘racist myth that [only a] white man can save the world.'”
How Ticket Scalpers (And Their Bots) Have Been Making Millions Off “Hamilton”
“What we found was that scalpers took in more than $15.5 million from the 100 performances before Mr. Miranda’s final show. The 32 performances between the June 12 Tony awards — where “Hamilton” won 11 statues — and July 9 may have brought in more than $10.5 million for scalpers alone.”
Researcher: Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt Were More Creative When They Were Unhappy
Polish economist Karol Jan Borowiecki, who previously examined the link between art and war, charted the emotional life of the three composers via their correspondence. He found “creativity, measured by the number of important compositions (they produced), is causally attributable to negative moods — in particular, sadness.”
Yup: Comic-Con = Hollywood. Hollywood = Comic-Con
Most studios may have played it cool this year, but Hollywood and Comic-Con are now one and the same. The only thing left to do is start preparing for next year. I’ve already got my Joker T-shirt packed.
Famous Armada Portrait Of Elizabeth I Will Stay In Britain Following Fundraising Appeal
“A grant of £7.4m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), using money from national lottery players, was the final piece in a campaign to raise £10.3m to buy the work … showing an elegant and triumphant Elizabeth I after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, … from descendants of [original owner] Sir Francis Drake.”
TKTS Half-Price Booth Sets Up At Lincoln Center (Where There Are Real New Yorkers)
“Beginning on Tuesday and continuing for three months, TKTS will sell tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway productions from a box office inside [Lincoln Center’s] David Rubenstein Atrium … The Lincoln Center venture is an effort by TKTS, which sells predominantly to tourists, to see if it can increase the number of tickets sold to New Yorkers” (who tend to avoid the flagship TKTS location in Times Square).