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The Art Of Writing An Opera Libretto

"As a librettist, I’m always aware that I’m serving the music. It’s a humbling experience. Coming from the world of theater is a good thing, because theater is all about collaboration and interpretation—you place the work in the hands of others, and it begins to transform.” - Paris Review

How LEGO Became The World’s Most Powerful Art Medium

“Lego’s appeal, represented by its zillions of plastic blocks and many movies and TV series, transcends nations. It is one of the planet’s top-selling toy brands, and the toy’s singular pixelated appearance is instantly recognizable on any screen.” - Salon

The Next Director Of The Tate Has To Confront An Unwieldy ‘Beast’ Of An Institution

“Visitor numbers have indeed recovered after falling from their peak in 2019, but finances were hit hard during the pandemic. Those financial headwinds have led to multiple rounds of redundancies, restructures and several ‘culture war’ battles.” - The Guardian (UK)

But Opera Will Die If We Can’t Wrest It Back From Big Tech

“There is something in the embodied expression of a trained singer, on stage, in a room with other human beings, that no synthetic content can touch. But in an age when AI generates infinite aesthetic stuff at effectively zero cost, ‘irreplaceable’ needs to be made explicit.” - Opera America

The Death Of Opera Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

"Opera has had to adapt to survive, and the truth is it has done so successfully.” - New York Sun

Michael Tilson Thomas Is Dead At 81

“He was widely considered one of the most distinguished American conductors of his generation” — most notably for his 25 years as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. “In addition to making more than 100 recordings of both rare and familiar classical repertory, he created valuable instructional series for television and radio.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo)

It Is Physically Painful To Write This, But Hollywood Is ‘Screenmaxxing’ Now

“Screenmaxxing is big business for an imperiled theatrical exhibition industry. … PLF screens seem to be an effective way to lure them out of the house, and charge a little (or a lot) extra for the assurance that they’re seeing a version of the movie that goes above and beyond.” - The Guardian (UK)

The Film About France During WWII That Is Very, Alarmingly Relevant To Several Other Countries Right Now

Yes, you need to watch The Sorrow and the Pity, and you need to do it right now. Why? Because “Ophuls’s film is illuminating precisely because its lessons about complicity apply to evil and corruption of all kinds.” - The Atlantic

How Do You Secure A Museum From Heists Without Closing It Off Entirely?

“Transparency, porousness — all the buzzwords of architecture today are antithetical to security. It’s a paradox implicit to museum design today.” - The New York Times

Children’s Author Jon Klassen Is The First Canadian To Win This Huge Children’s Literature Prize

“The Winnipeg-born children's book author and illustrator of I Want My Hat Back, has won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is worth nearly $750,00” (Canadian). - CBC

This 95-Second Scene Change At The Met Opera Is An Astounding Feat Of Coordination

In the company’s staging of Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence, seven stage managers, four prop masters, and a big flock of stagehands transform the set from a decorated wedding-banquet hall into a blood-spattered high-school classroom in a minute and a half — and they do it while the set is rotating. - The New York Times

Should Music Directors Spend More Time In Their Orchestras’ Hometowns And Stop Juggling Multiple Jobs?

One the one hand, you have the Buffalo Philharmonic’s JoAnn Falletta and the South Dakota Symphony’s Delta David Gier, both thoroughly embedded in their communities. On the other, you have Klaus Mäkelä with three orchestras and Andris Nelsons, who's losing his Boston Symphony job partly because he's so busy elsewhere. - The New York Times

Madrid Doesn’t Want To Let Picasso’s Guernica Go To Basque Country

But “the Basque government, headed by Imanol Pradales of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), has made the transfer of Picasso’s painting a matter of regional pride." - El País English ...

The Increasing Accusations That Everything Is Made With AI

“Solutions like Proudly Human and Not by AI aim to be broader, covering published text, visual art, videography, and music, but the verification processes being used by these services can be questionable.” (Archive Today version here.) - The Verge

Portland State University Eliminates Its Once-Storied Dance Program

PSU’s “dance program had once been a cornerstone of Portland’s artistic community, even as it struggled against decades of intermittent support, administrative turnover, and shifting school priorities.” - Oregon ArtsWatch

How Reality TV Became An Unstoppable Cultural Force

“Many shows have not only endured, they’ve spawned universes, international adaptations and spinoffs. Bravo, a TV channel that used to focus on the performing arts, is now an unscripted powerhouse that even has its own convention, BravoCon.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

Will A Lawsuit Allow Claire Tabouret’s Windows To Be Mounted In Notre Dame?

“At the crux of the controversy is the fact that Tabouret’s new windows would push out Viollet-le-Duc’s undamaged ones. Advocates for the project argue that since the windows date to the 19th century, instead of the Middle Ages, they are fair game to be replaced.” - ARTnews

The World Is Hostile To Socially Progressive Art, But Also Wants To Copy It – For Profit

"Developers discovered the cultural value of place-making. Corporations embraced art as branding. Cultural nonprofits and academic institutions increasingly adopted the vocabulary of community engagement while operating within the same economic structures driving displacement.” What now? - Hyperallergic

Trump Has Columbus Status Installed On The White House Grounds

It’s “is a replica of one that protesters in Baltimore tore down and dumped into the city’s Inner Harbor in the summer of 2020. The statue’s marble pieces were retrieved from the harbor, and a Maryland artist used them to guide the creation of the replica." - The New York Times

Israel May Be Considering Banning Artist Rama Duwaji, First Lady Of New York

“The ministry reportedly took issue with Duwaji’s animation Eyes on Jenin (2025), a work that linked police brutality against pro-Palestinian protesters to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” - Hyperallergic