| National Opera in revival mode | | Posted Monday, October 16, 2006 3:07:18 PM by Blog57 Team | | Photo: I want everything to be done right, but not with luxury or high-tech perfection, which is very costly. We have already done a lot and I will not stop improving conditions for those working at the National Opera, says Lazaridis. By Vassilis Angelikopoulos - Kathimerini The hazy situation prevailing at the National Opera is gradually starting to clear up, with the appointment of well-known opera director and set designer Stefanos Lazaridis as the institutions new director. Lazaridis seems concerned with improving the quality of opera performances, reorganizing the ballet, strengthening the Experimental Stage, taking a closer look at the Childrens Opera Stage and opening the doors for more collaborations with foreign operas. The National Opera still lacks a suitable home, but Lazaridis says he initially wants to work more broadly on the operas image.... | |
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| | | Don Giovanni - Lacock Abbey | | Posted Friday, September 01, 2006 9:11:19 PM by Blog57 Team | | AUGUST 19 2006, LACOCK: This Saturday 19 August, one of the best known operas of the last 200 years, Don Giovanni', will be performed at Lacock Abbey. This glorious tragedy will be performed in English by the Opera Project, who will be returning to Lacock to dazzle audiences. It will be staged outside with the beautiful Lacock Abbey as the backdrop. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) composed Don Giovanni' on a commission for Prague where it was first performed on 29 October 1787. The plot follows the villainous path of the hero' Don Giovanni whose story is presented through beautiful music and awe inspiring song. .... | |
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| | | Marlins owner avoids talk of rift | | Posted Monday, August 28, 2006 7:00:47 AM by Blog57 Team | | Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria offered a curt assessment of his strained relationship with manager Joe Girardi, which may mean they'll soon part company. "Everything is, you know, it's fine," Loria said Saturday. "But I don't want to talk about it." Addressing his rift with Girardi for the first time since it became public three weeks ago, Loria repeatedly tried to steer the conversation away from the subject. He declined to endorse the job Girardi has done in his first year as manager, even though baseball's youngest team has far exceeded expectations. "Managers obviously have some input during the course of the season," Loria said. "But what's important is the product that's put on the field by the baseball department as well. An amazing job was done by our organization before we started this season." When told his comments might fuel the perception Girardi won't return next season, Loria told reporters: "If you guys want to come to those conclusions, OK.... | |
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| | | 'Don Giovanni' makes premiere in Vienna | | Posted Monday, July 24, 2006 9:13:03 AM by Blog57 Team | | VIENNA, Austria - Mozart and his librettist labeled it a "jolly play," but there was no happy end to the premiere of Vienna's newest "Don Giovanni." In fact the stage resembled a slaughterhouse. First, Donna Elvira, the rake's slighted lover stabs him, sending him retching blood all over the place. Then more blood flows as the Don - aged but unrepentant - breathes his last in an upright Plexiglas cube that is positively smeared by the red stuff as he twists and turns, beset by paroxysms of agony over the sinful life he has led. Darkness. Death. Suffering. Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte had it otherwise in the original, with all the main characters wronged by the Don taking to the stage one more time to sing of their personal redemption, now that the evildoer had been dragged to hell in a scene that they meant to be merely symbolic - not bloody.... | |
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| | | Backing himself into corner | | Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 7:06:09 PM by Blog57 Team | | The man regarded as pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world sat in a chair Saturday night in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand, his eyes flashing. Floyd Mayweather Jr. was seething at the injustice of life. Perhaps 10 yards away, a lineup of some of the best boxing talent of the last decade (or two) stood arm-in-arm on a vast podium from which Mayweather felt excluded, posing for a group photograph. There were Oscar De La Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley, Marco Antonio Barrera, and Winky Wright, all business partners in Golden Boy Promotions now that the company De La Hoya founded had reached an agreement with Wright's fledgling promotional company to handle his boxing affairs as well as the others'. As the Golden Boy group stood there grinning, Mayweather seemed convinced he sat where he so obsessively seems to see himself -- on the outside.... | |
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