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| | | Annie Mac to launch club night ending at 12am 'for people who need sleep' | | by Nadia Khomami Arts and Culture correspondent Apr 1, 2022 | | DJ responds to demand for nightlife that suits older people and other ‘Cinderellas’ More than 40 years ago, the folk singer Fred Wedlock branded anybody showing a little grey hair who fancied a night on the tiles as that most tragic of figures: “the oldest swinger in town”. But, in 2022, refusing to give up dancing once your skin clears up is no longer a source of shame. Instead, there are enough people in middle age ready to go clubbing that they are taking over venues – until the clock strikes midnight, at least. Continue reading... | | | | | Peter Gelb of the New York Met: 'We're cancelling Putin, not Pushkin' | | by Nicholas Wroe Apr 1, 2022 | | The most powerful person in opera has a Zelig-like propensity to always be present when politics have crossed over with classical music – the Russian invasion of Ukraine is no exception In the last week of February, Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, was in Moscow to cast his eye over the dress rehearsal of the Met’s co-production with the Bolshoi theatre of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Six days later, minutes before curtain-up on the new season in New York City, Gelb was watching Vladyslav Buialskyi, a 24-year-old Ukrainian bass-baritone in the Met’s young artists programme, give a hurriedly ad hoc pronunciation lesson to the Met chorus for them to sing the Ukrainian national anthem before the performance. In the intervening week relations with the Bolshoi had been severed, plans to build scenery and costumes for an exclusively home-produced Lohengrin had been set in train and Anna Netrebko, the leading soprano of her generation and the Met’s longtime star, withdrew from her performances with the company while failing to renounce Vladimir Putin. “When I was in Moscow there was obviously great political tension in the air,” says Gelb. “I remember speaking to colleagues in the Bolshoi about how at moments like this, artistic exchange is more important than ever. I meant it. That has been the way I’ve operated all my life. But I then got off a 10-hour flight home and what everyone thought was unthinkable, but apparently had been planned all along, happened. Putin had invaded Ukraine and at that point I switched gears. There was no great moral dilemma or difficult decision to make. We had to immediately sever relations with Putin-backed organisations, which sadly included the Bolshoi. I greatly admire them artistically, but it is Putin who literally signs the contract of my counterpart there and so the decision was clear.” Continue reading... | | | | | |
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