Blinding from within
Which NYCO board member—who haunted the company’s Lincoln Center venue for many years—has just taken a walk, resigning in sympathy with the unions?
Which NYCO board member—who haunted the company’s Lincoln Center venue for many years—has just taken a walk, resigning in sympathy with the unions?
Joyce Castle
Joyce = Witch in Hansel and Gretel. I can’t imagine her standing in support for what is happening.
The challenge is finding a complete list of board members. The best I could find was a 2-year-old press release with the 7 newest ones. I have an idea where the titular puns are heading, but no name to match them with.
“haunted”
Alice Ghostley? Phil Spector?
To find a list of the NYCO Board, it is necessary to go only as far as a NYCO program from this season:
Charles R. Wall, Chairman
Mark W. Newhouse, President
James C. Marlas, Vice Chairman
Mary Sharp Cronson, secretary
HRH Princess Alexandra of Greece
Susan L. Baker
John E. Baumgardner, Jr
John H. Biggs
Hon. Michael R. Bloomberg (ex officio)
Sanfurd G. Bluestein, MD
Jacques Bouhet
Catherine Gilles carmody
Joyce Castle
Emilie Roy Corey
Caroline Cronson
Jennie DeScherer (ex officio)
Brooke Hayward Duchin
Edmee de M. Firth
Michael E. Gellert
Nomi Ghez
Joan Granlund
Susan Zises Green
Lewis B. Kaden
Howard S. Kelberg
Nizam P. Kettaneh
W. Loeber Landau
Hon. Kate D. Levin (ex officio)
Helen Litle
Lynn J. Loacker
Jessee Robert Lovejoy
Roy. G. Niederhoffer
Martin J. Oppenheimer
Charles I. Petschek
Marc Powell
Jonathan Sheffer
Elliot L. Slade III
Mrs. James Slaughter
Pamela Thomas-Graham
Alair A. Townsend (ex officio)
Herbert M. Wachtell
Now if you are looking for a name that “has haunted the compsny’s Lincoln Center Venue for many years” you have to look not at the Board of Directors but at the Artistic Committee where one finds:
John Corigliano, composer of the Ghosts of Versailles
Other notables include Joyce DiDonato, Mark Adamo, Christopher Alden, Frank Corsaro, John Guare, John Kander, Paul Kellogg, Michael John LaChiusa, J.D. McClatchy, Terrence McNally, Hal Prince, Samuel Ramey, Julius Rudel, Stephen Schwartz, Twyla Tharp, Camilla Williams and John Zorn among others.
Lois Kirchenbaum? You mean to tell us that Susan Baker is STILL on that board after all the harm she caused? That’s amazing. Let us pray that more board members vanish from that list and can be replaced with angels who can out the present administration and make it possible for NYCO surpass their accomplishments d’autrefois.
I wonder how many of those board members even know what their colleagues on the board look like.
OT with a vengeance. Just back from the WP of Muhly’s Two Boys at ENO.
Many good-to-exquisite ideas in the orchestra: some mid-period Wagner harmonic progressions supporting a delicately woven post-minimalist fabric; divided strings and tuned gongs used with a real ear. This level of imagination is not reflected in the vocal writing, which is modernistic-declamatory with little variety of pace and an increasingly predictable range of inflection. The singers throw themselves into it with a will and sometimes convince us that their lines do convey emotion, but this is a short-lived delusion given the monotony of the material they have to work with. Obviously if the vocal music lived up to Muhly’s orchestral imagination, we’d be dealing with a masterpiece. He has time.
Bartlett Sher has the unenviable task of staging the multilayered complexity of the internet on a proscenium stage. He tries. The many projections (Plan 59 from Outer Space, I think) and hard contours of Yeargen’s grey towers help but the zombie plod of the extras and chorus look like badly drilled school of Bob Wilson set within a conceptual void. Nothing sails in from left field: wit, surprise, changes of speed are absent. Worthy ain’t enuf.
I know OT is supposed to be in the Intermission Feature, but many thanks. I’m dying of curiousity about this piece.
Washington Post weighs in on Two Boys
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/classical-beat/post/muhlys-two-boys-debuts-at-eno/2011/06/24/AG9oiijH_blog.html
Fair to say the reviews on Opera Critic so far are decidedly ‘mixed’ with probably a slight lean towards negative. At any rate, it seems to have polarised the critics.
“Bartlett Sher has the unenviable task of staging the multilayered complexity of the internet on a proscenium stage.”
So what doe Rob Besserer do in this one?
Sher cannot hold a candle to the likes of Stefan Herheim.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at8F3MXwr4Q
Rob plays the siilent role of “the google”…….
Not Jackie. Non sequitur.
Nice to see Barry Manilow conducting -- and so well too!
I just notice the presence of HRH Princess Alexandra of Greece on the Board, who at this stage of the Greek economy is probably only able to come up with a few bottles of olive oil and has more important fish to fry than City Opera’s mess.
But I bet she’s not a big fan of the unions….
Perhaps as a Royal,HRH Princess Alexandria of Greece being a board member she could bestow on Ms Susan Baker a Greek Title for her tarnished services to NYCO.
Perhaps pushing for her to be made Greece’s Finance Minister (of Bankruptry) or ‘Countess of Atlantis’ or ‘Duchess Circe’. Such appropriate Titles, seem befitting social sirens: presiding over shipwrecks and sunken ventures.
Perhaps as a Royal,HRH Princess Alexandria of Greece being a board member she could bestow on Ms Susan Baker a Greek Title for her tarnished services to NYCO.
Perhaps pushing for her to be made Greece’s Finance Minister (of Bankrupty) or ‘Countess of Atlantis’ or ‘Duchess Circe’. Such appropriate Titles, seem befitting social sirens: presiding over shipwrecks and sunken ventures.
Well, she isn’t a “royal” and has no legal right to the HRH title. She is the daughter of Prince Michael, who has lived in New York for many years, and she may never have set foot in Greece if she’s deemed by their laws to be a member of the Royal Family — who are proscribed from entering the country. (An exception is of course made for the Queen of Spain, since she is now monarch of another country and can visit in that capacity.)
Actually it is the wrong Greek princess that is on the board. ( Can’t they do anything right at NYCO?)
They should have picked the American heiress Marie-Chantal Miller, Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess of Greece, Princess of Denmark. Her husband’s aunt is Queen Margaret of Denmark and a great supporter of the arts.
Marie-Chantal is daughter of Robert Warren Miller of Duty Free Fame ( among other things) and he has very deep pockets.
Marie-Chantal has her title because she is married to Crown Prince Pavlos ( of Greece)
Alto, it is not correct that members of the Greek Royal Family are not allowed to visit Greece. Pavlos’s mother Queen Anne Marie is a Danish princess.
Since 2003 – when the property dispute between her husband Constantine and the government of Greece concluded – Anne-Marie has visited Greece numerous times. (Wikipedia)
And some people think opera plots are contrived!
But Anne Marie is in a separate category. She is a *born* princess of Denmark, a title that does not depend on the vagaries of Greek law. Greece has nothing against Denmark; it’s the Greek dynasty that they excluded by referendum.
Opps!
Yes- don’t worry Harry it was regrettable the first time