| Abroad: ‘Tristan’ Harmonies Trump La Scala’s Labor Discord
The audience yelped and stomped during his curtain call. Michelle DeYoung, the gifted American mezzo, brought tenderness to Brangäne, Isolde's attendant. The heart and soul of "Tristan" comes down to the orchestra, and Mr. Barenboim, who knows this opera as well as anyone, drew rich, densely textured, multilayered sounds from his players. Occasionally they drowned out the singers, but that's always the case; and more important, where they needed to, they stretched aching melodies as if toward infinity. Mr. Barenboim is partly filling the job that Riccardo Muti vacated two years ago, when he quit here in a huff, and the Scala audience, to make apparent that it welcomed their new principal guest conductor, cheered him both after the second intermission and again when he shepherded the orchestra onto the stage for a lengthy curtain call.
An artful, hands-on showcase
For holiday shoppers looking for gifts with a little more imagination, students and teachers at the Creative Arts Center are selling their handmade works at their annual Holiday Arts & Crafts Boutique.The event allows the center’s artists the chance to have their work shown and make a little money for themselves and the center, said Barbara Rog, recreation program specialist. .
Bill De Blasio
Former Stonewall Democratic Club President and City Council candidate Bob Zuckerman thinks the current City Council has spent a little too much time passing unneeded legislation. “I may introduce one resolution if I'm in the City Council, and that is to ban resolutions," Zuckerman says in this clip, taken outside a holiday party last week. The Council, Zuckerman says, “really needs to focus on important issues that affect people's lives, not things like street renaming, and banning words, which is impossible to do, and banning aluminum bats, and controlling how much work kids do." (Also, a warning: This video is a graphic illustration of the perils of shooting with a semi-functional viewfinder.) .
Dreaming of Anna heads QE II Cup field
One year short of its own silver jubilee, the $500,000 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup for 3-year-old fillies headlines the Saturday card and, fitting enough, another member of royalty heads the cast. Dreaming of Anna, last year's champion juvenile filly, is favored to win her fourth straight race and put a dismal stretch last winter and spring emphatically behind her. While not quite relegated to commoner status, Dreaming of Anna failed to show her brilliance in three stakes, which culminated in an exhausting sixth-place finish in a muddy Kentucky Oaks. Trainer Wayne Catalano then scaled back her races and restricted her to turf and the wins started to come, most recently in the Pucker Up Stakes at Arlington Park. "She's like a lawn mower on grass," owner Frank Calabrese said after the Arlington race.
Union Township artist struts his stuff
Morton Wendt Tucker Jr. was about 4 years old when he'd tag along with Dad to his grandfather's Hammond home, where the elder Tucker was doing remodeling work.While his father worked, the young boy would pull out his grandpa's scrapbook and admire the photos in it, until he became bored and looked to do something else. Tucker Sr., hoping to keep his son occupied and out of trouble, pulled out a pad of paper."Here," he told his son. "Just draw something."Tucker Jr. retrieved the scrapbook, took out a photo of an old steam engine, and drew it. Then he found other photos -- a truck, a car, scenery -- and drew those."I decided I really liked doing it," Tucker said. "I branched out."Tucker eventually segued from drawing to painting while a student at Griffith High School. He put his artist brush down when he was 21 and didn't retrieve it until several years later after support from his wife, Kathy."She encouraged me to get back into it," he said.Tucker is now a realist painter and the proprietor of The Gallery & Studio of Morton Wendt Tucker Jr., located at his home in Union Township.
Breakdown of companies proposing Sumner County casinos
Other casinos include Circus Circus, Reno, Nev.; Silver Legacy, Reno, Nev. (50 percent); Gold Strike, Jean, Nev.; Railroad Pass, Henderson, Nev.; MGM Grand, Detroit; Beau Rivage, Biloxi, Miss.; Gold Strike, Tunica, Miss.; Borgata, Atlantic City, N.J. (50 percent); and Grand Victoria, Elgin, Ill. (50 percent). Named one of 40 top companies for diversity by Black Enterprise magazine. Named a top company for diversity by three Hispanic magazines. MGM Grand Detroit named one of top 10 new hotels in the nation by Gayot.com. Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian purchased a stake in MGM movie studio in 1970 for just more than $80 million. He sold many of MGM's assets in the early 1970s due to financial difficulties, but kept the MGM name. He took MGM Grand public in 1987. He started buying up Las Vegas property in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
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