Why Did The Met Opera Fire Director John Copley? Here's What Really Happened

In a rehearsal, male choristers they were told to show different reactions to the ‘ghost’ of Assur (sung by Ildar Abdrazakov, who was not present). They are for a range of ideas. John Copley jokingly said ‘if it were me I’d like to see him naked.’ One chorus member reported this joke upward. Peter Gelb fired John Copley. He caught the next plane home. The vast majority of the chorus, we are told, are horrified and upset at his dismissal. Other singers are posting sympathy messages and photographs of Uncle John.

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So What Was Manhattan's Lincoln Plaza Cinema *Really* Like? This. (And Maybe This Is Why It's Closing)

"Irritated cross talk and loud quarrels, whether between couples or random filmgoers, was such a mainstay of the Lincoln Plaza experience that last fall, my wife and I made a point of going there to see The Meyerowitz Stories, with Dustin Hoffman playing an ill-tempered sculptor and bad father, because we knew it would be like seeing the film in Sensurround." And, found Bruce Handy, it was - even at a weekday matinee.

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Wendell Castle, Who Made Furniture Art (And Vice Versa), Dead At 85

"Over more than a half-century, Mr. Castle helped establish a creative genre, the studio crafts, that blended furniture-making and sculpture. He was a designer whose chairs, tables and coat racks were works of art, and an artist whose oeuvre could be used as well as admired."

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How A Small Appalachian Town Made Itself Into An Arts Destination - By Raising Its Taxes

"City officials [in Berea, Kentucky] count 40 galleries in total, and three new restaurants and a gallery-cafe have opened in the past two years - not a bad showing of entrepreneurship in a city of fewer than 20,000 people. ... But it wasn't always like this." Ivy Brashear reports on how it got to be like this.

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Portland's Small Theatres Band Together To Cope With Soaring Rents

As with just about any cool city these days, real estate costs in the City of Roses have been rising faster than cash-strapped arts organizations can keep up with - especially for the clear-space buildings that theatres need. As several of Portland's smaller companies lost their spaces at around the same time, they got creative.

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U.S. Commercial Airlines Give Millions For Renovation At National Air And Space Museum

Nine of the country's ten largest passenger carriers have donated a total of $28 million for a makeover of the exhibition on the history of commercial aviation at the Smithsonian's most popular museum.

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Met Opera Fires Stage Director For 'Inappropriate Behavior In The Rehearsal Room'

"[John] Copley, 84, has been one of the opera world's foremost directors for decades. He was at the Met directing a revival of his 1990 production of Rossini's Semiramide when a member of the chorus reported that Mr. Copley had made him uncomfortable at a rehearsal on Monday with a sexually charged remark, according to two people familiar with the complaint."

Article source here:Arts Journal