Новости за 06.06.2016

To celebrate its move to Lincoln Center in 1966 the Metropolitan Opera commissioned a new opera from Samuel Barber, who chose Shakespeare’s Anthony And Cleopatra, for which he imagined an intimate setting. Not so the director, Franco Zeffirelli, who demanded “mammoth sets, a vast cast, and sumptuous costumes”. The resulting débacle was worthy of Spinal Tap. Leontyne Price, as Cleopatra, “got locked inside a massive pyramid and had no choice but to keep singing from within”. Barber fled for Europe the next day... Читать дальше...

The insurance industry covers 30 satellite launches each year and some 200 satellites in orbit for a total exposure of $25bn. What are the risks? Manufacturing defects, as with everything. Space debris — see Gravity — went from minor to major threat in 2007 when China blew up a weather satellite. But the space equivalent of an earthquake would be “an anomalously large solar proton flare” which could disable “a large number of satellites” by blowing their power circuits

Kris Kristofferson “happens to be one of the greatest songwriters of all time”. He went quiet for a few years following a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. But a new diagnosis — Lyme’s Disease — and new medication has brought him back. He’s 80, his memory is poor, but he’s working again, on stage with Willie Nelson and doing voice-overs for Fox. He says he “doesn’t feel creative”, but, happily, his daughter says otherwise: “He leaves little pieces of songs lying around the house all the time”

Discussion of the changing nature of Encyclopedia Britannica. The Ninth Edition of 1902-03 was a “scholars’ edition — a collection of monographs by very knowledgeable people”, without any “overarching statement”. The Eleventh Edition of 1910-11 came with an agenda. The editor, Hugh Chisholm, meant “to create a single statement about the optimism of the age and the triumph of technology. When considered as a book, it’s forty million words, but the topic is a single one: progress.”

The appearance of the crescent moon in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar marks the start of Ramadan. Moon committees call in their sightings to the Supreme Court, which makes the final decision; this year’s date was June 6th. Scientific instruments are not used, because “seeing the moon with the naked eye should be the criterion for declaring the start of a new month”. The average daily fast during Ramadan ranges from 11 hours in Sydney to 22 hours in Arkhangelsk

Architects claim wrongly the status of fine artists. When challenged about the social consequences of her work for the super-rich, Zaha Hadid said: “It’s for the government to take care of. It’s not my duty as an architect to look at”. But architects carry a greater responsibility. They have the power to inspire bad people to build bad things. “No one lost a home when Dylan went electric. Ordinary people, whether they like it or not, must live with the consequences of architecture’s creations”

Notes from 17 years answering emergency calls. “I’ve listened to a lot of people die, and take it from me, people don’t slip away quietly with one last longing look and a soft sigh of disappointed resignation. The body is built to fight, and even in the most exhausted of frames, it can kick up a racket on its way out. It’s not polite. It doesn’t ask permission. It rattles and gasps and wheezes like an accordion being run over by a tractor-trailer. I’ve heard so many people die that sometimes I can... Читать дальше...

On average, less than half the tickets for a top sporting event or rock concert ever go on sale to the general public; and when they do go on sale they get hoovered up by scalpers’ online bots. The majority of tickets — including all of the best tickets — are either reserved for friends and celebrities, or sold by the promoter straight into the secondary market at inflated prices via ticket brokers, enabling the players or performers to make much more money while the scalpers take the blame

The Netherlands is a “traumatised, angry and deeply confused nation”. A “Dutch turn” is underway. If Brexit comes, can Nexit be far behind? “What if the European project is an edifice with fatally flawed foundations? How does an open society based on equality survive, when every year it takes in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries with no tradition of openness, equality or democratic debate? Especially when those immigrants have more children than the native Dutch?”