Opinion
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Met Opera Ends Season with a Bang
Alagna Sings Cyrano
By: - May 11th, 2017Opera is a form of many pieces. When the set, production, singing and orchestra work together, opera makes its own case. Cyrano de Bergerac realizes the seemingly Sisyphean task beautifully.
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Agita of the Artist Martin Mugar
Innocence and Experience
By: - Apr 26th, 2017For Blake, Christ was both a child and a lamb putting the innocence of the child and the lamb of the poem a priori in the realm of the godly. One cannot be a lamblike or a childlike without that innocence of God, which raises the question: what then is experience without innocence? Experience can only be a loss of innocence. Why do I in my painting linger in this realm of peachy keen colors if not to insist on the importance of this innocence that precedes experience.
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Tilson Thomas and Gehry's New New World
Miami Beach Leads the Way to Future of Classical Music
By: - Apr 18th, 2017Frank Gehry babysat for Michael Tilson Thomas in Los Angeles where they both grew up. Now they are building a new world for classical music together.
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How to Watch a Movie
Salvation in a Darkened Room
By: - Apr 10th, 2017This think piece explores the difference between movies and cinema. In a compelling overview Kempf states that "I go to a lot of movies for a variety of reasons: to learn about other worlds/people/times through fictions and documentaries, to measure the zeitgeist, to ease a 100°+ summer day, but my primary desire is to experience the art of cinema, a remarkable art that, even more than stage, is collaborative and incorporates the entire constellation of the arts."
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Can the Metropolitan Opera Survive
The House is One-Quarter Full
By: - Apr 10th, 2017Sitting in the 7th row of the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, in a skimpy house, most of my neighbors had paid between $20 and $37.50 for their tickets. Fortunately for the Met Opera, HD fans have a different take on Met productions than people who like their opera live.
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ICA To Lease Expanded Space
Two if by Sea in East Boston
By: - Mar 07th, 2017When the Institute of Contemporary Art opened its waterfront home there were awards for the dramatic design by Diller Scofido and Renfro. Immediately, however, it was obvious that with 65,000 square feet, and just its top floor for exhibitions, there was no plan for expansion and growth. For the next five to ten years the ICA is leasing a 15,000 square foot industrial place in East Boston. Visitors will commute by ferry to the seasonal Watershed which opens in the summer of 2018.
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Rockefeller Offers Hamilton Matinees
Title 1 School Children See the Best Show in Town
By: - Mar 02nd, 2017Alexander Hamilton may have created the financial system that made building John D. Rockefeller's fortune possible. Now Rockefeller money is being used to fund tickets for Title 1 school children to attend the hottest show in town, "Hamilton."
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Denver's Unique Strategy to Fund the Arts
One Cent from Every Ten Dollars Spent Goes a Long Way
By: - Feb 26th, 2017There is a 0.1 percent sales tax for arts and culture in Denver’s seven-county metro area. At just one cent for every ten dollars it generates $1.85 billion annually in economic activity, creates 10,205 jobs, and stimulates $520 million in tourism.
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Federal Support for the Arts Under Attack
Five Boston Museum Directors Express Concern
By: - Feb 24th, 2017Five Boston museum directors have signed a letter of concern over reports that the National Endowment for the Arts is under threat of being abolished, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Under the conservative agenda of the Trump adminsitration this is an attack on the arts in America. Guarding the Trumps in NY, DC and Palm Beach for a week is on a par with endowment support.
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The Science of Vaccinations
Scratch and Sniff
By: - Feb 15th, 2017Polio is widely regarded, along with smallpox, as vaccination’s other “unmistakable success,” and in recent years the World Health Organization has pronounced it confined to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Vote for North Adams
Contest for $500,000 Grant
By: - Feb 09th, 2017North Adams has bsen selected as one of five finalists for Main Street Season Two. Please help by casting a vote once a day from now through February 16. The prize for the Small Business Revolution contest is $500,000.
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Pittsfield's Four Freedom's Rally
Colonial Theatre Saturday, January 28
By: - Jan 27th, 2017Recently The Colonial Thatre in Pittsfield was the site for a packed gathering as a part of the national Women's March in protest of the extremist threats of President Donald Trump. The Colonial Theatre will be a part of the national Four Freedom's Rally on Saturday, January 28. Kate Maguire, the artistic director of the Berkshire Theatre Group, which includes the Colonial has taken a stand in activist resistance.
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Decline in Theatre and Arts Media Coverage
Matt Windman Panel for American Theatre Critics Association
By: - Jan 08th, 2017Matt Windman, author of “The Critics Say…57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future,” led a panel discussion during the NY ATCA conference on the state of theater criticism in today’s world of social media bloggers and a decreasing number of full-time print theater critics
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Love at a Distance by Kaija Saariaho
Heralded Across the Continent, So So at the Met Opera
By: - Dec 22nd, 2016An important opera by a major composer is set well at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Met Orchestra under Susanna Mälkki was magnificent. The orchestral score is one of beauty and terror, evoking the sea and the dangers of love. It is the story that provides an arc, and this production missed it entirely, leaving the experience flat.
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Holiday Leftovers
The New Agit-Prop
By: - Nov 26th, 2016A friend wrote of spending Thanksgiving in the kitchen and concern that I had passed mine contemplating the pending decline and fall of an American empire. The response set forth some concerns for the new era of social and political commentary. The end is near and starts now.
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Winter at The Mount
Events Through February
By: - Nov 18th, 2016Now that it is assured of ongoing financial stability The Mount, a landmark in the Berkshires, is moving toward increased winter programming., Here is a schedule of upcoming events.
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Gloucester Author Peter Anastas
Responding to Olson's Place as the Geography of Our Being
By: - Sep 24th, 2016During our recent visits including a residency at the Gloucester Writers Center we encountered the author Peter Anastas. He is an activist and author of novels based on Gloucster. In particular we are interested in his relationship with Charles Olson and his influence on the rich literary culture of Cape Ann. With permission we are reposting an excerpt of a long interview between Anastas and Karl Young.
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Boston Globe Shrinks Fine Arts Coverage
Eliminating Cate McQuaid's Weekly Gallery Column
By: - Sep 21st, 2016Bad news continues for the arts community. The Boston Globe has announced that it is elminating Cate McQuaid's weekly gallery column. Kington Gallery is circulating a petition to have the vital coverage reinstated.
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Roger Nierenberg Teaches Listening
Kodaly, Britten, Wagner and Ravel at DeMenna Center
By: - Sep 20th, 2016The conundrum of declining symphony audiences is being addressed with all sorts of efforts. The Roger Nierenberg proposal, mixing the audience in and with the orchestra, is a bold and helpful approach.
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Globe and Times Shrink Arts Coverage
Direct Impact on the Berkshires
By: - Sep 11th, 2016In the ever eroding realm of print journalism yet again the deep cuts are to the arts. Berkshire theatre companies, Tanglewood, Jacob's Pillow, and museums have long relied on reviews by the New York Times and Boston Globe. As of now the Times is eliminating "regional" coverage which includes the Berkshires. In the western part of the state the arts in the Berkshires are likely to get far less attention from the Boston Globe. With its emphasis on "national" coverage the Williamstown Theatre Festival this season moved opening night from Thursday to Saturday in a perceived snub to "local" reviews including timely blogs. Other than the Eagle they also diminished access for interviews and elminated press conferences. Those polices may come back to haunt arts organizations next summer.
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Opera Love in Santa Fe
Exploring a Theme
By: - Aug 25th, 2016Love is the theme connecting the five productions of the Santa Fe Opera 2016 Festival. Leading off one week of the season was Don Giovanni, where an attempted rape and then a murder jumpstart the opera. The Don is a questionable subject for the discussion of love, as the Don mows down woman after woman in his quest for the Guinness Book of Records first place position as the world’s best, or most effective, seducer. Yet love triumphs.
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Gonzo Aesthetics of Giuliano’s Poetry
Ultra Cosmic Gonzology
By: - Aug 18th, 2016With the third book of poetry by Charles Giuliano, Ultra Cosmic Gonzology, again the essayist is Robert Henriquez. The former CBS News producer has probed deeply into aspects of the avant-garde and places the development of gonzo poetry into a larger historical and literary context. The new book will be launched with a reading at Gloucester Writers Center on August 31.
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Boston's The Arts Fuse
Website Has Sixty Contributors
By: - Aug 15th, 2016As news rooms and journals have shrunk or disappeared there are ever fewer resurces for established arts writers. In Boston William Marx has established the respected and ever expanding site The Arts Fuse. One of the sixty contributors, film critic Gerald Peary, wrote a memo to his colleagues. We have published an excerpt. We urge our readers to link to and discover this diverse and informative arts site.
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Artwashing: Gentrification or Cultural Enrichment?
Aiding Derelict Neighborhoods or Abetting Social Inequity
By: - Aug 11th, 2016For the anti-gentrification critics, urban deterioration should be left the way it is rather than reverse it through the introduction of art galleries, performance spaces, work/live lofts, and museums. This is an issue wrapped in controversy that underscores progress while perhaps marginalizing impoverished residents and pioneering artists. It is hard to determine if everyone is right or everyone is wrong.
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Huntington Theatre Company Gets A Reprieve
Theatre To Stay Put on Avenue of the Arts
By: - Jun 09th, 2016After Boston University decided to sell the building in which the Huntington Theatre Company has had its lovely theatre last Fall, there was a great deal of agita and even grief as to what would become of the Huntington. Would the theatre company have to relocate? Would the large structure be torn down for expensive condos? Could the City of Boston help find a development/real estate partner? Like a Deus Ex Machina, Good News has arrived with a happy ending.
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