This week, the National Travel Opera begins rehearsals of Mozart's Le nozze di figaro. In the bin, the brand-new Netherlands Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jan Willem de Vriend. Business as usual, as both companies have been working closely together for years and are united in the National Music Quarter Enschede. Only: orchestra and opera company have not been talking to each other since last week.
The 62nd Berlinale opened tonight with Benoït Jacquot's Les adieux à la reine, a French costume piece that does not play by the rules. The dresses worn by Queen Marie Antoinette's servants get dirty and one of the main characters stumbles in her haste and passes out twice. As the film begins we write 14 July 1789, and the...
Compared to previous editions, you could almost call the choice of opening film that kicks off the Rotterdam Film Festival tonight almost un-Rotterdamian. No wild young debut, exotic Asian or artistic crossover this time. The French book adaptation 38 Témoins, which has its world premiere in Rotterdam tonight, is the seventh feature by Walloon actor/director Lucas Belvaux and has already been acquired...
In the debate Burger King & Citizenship give Patrick van der Hijden, David van Reybrouck, Chris Keulemans and Samuel Vriezen Their views on the state of the citizen. Public may, but need not, participate. Below is the column State of Indulgence, recited by Patrick van der Hijden - as a kick-off to the debate.
"Our life was invented in the 18th century.
Members of the upper classes - the elite - had their own homes, often with gardens. They sent their children to school, which then started further education. They had free time and generally arrived at their appointments on time, due to the watches they wore and the train barges that left on time (they complained when delayed). Citizens who lived outside the city commuted - by carriage, that is. They drank coffee to stay awake. They visited restaurants with menus. They were vaccinated against smallpox and had pets. A great source on that life is the diary of Otto van Eck, who started it at the age of 10 under pressure from his Enlightenment-obsessed parents, in 1791. I borrow the above examples from that.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this life is not lived by a small minority, but by a large part of the Dutch population. These do have to do without staff. That, in fact, has been replaced by technology.
In the late 1980s, John N. Gray (South Shields, 1948) adviser to Margaret Thatcher - Gray: "I was just a small mote of dust in her administration" - now he is a fierce critic of all things neoconservative. On Writers Unlimited, publicist Bas Heijne felt him out.
Dinaw Mengestu shares his surname with the first name of one of Ethiopia's former dictators. "For now, I am a writer, but aspire to a career as a dictator," he says. Dictators do not arise in a vacuum, Mengestu argues. "We as citizens create our leaders," he says. In his recited story, citizens hand over all their dreams. They shift all their responsibility towards those in power. And.
He is now a publisher, and the man who was director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature until last year will be quite happy with that. As director of the Bezige Bij, one of the country's largest publishing houses, he will surely never again have to submissively toast the sarcastic State Secretary for Culture Halbe Zijlstra. At least the relief was audible in Pröpper's...
A wheel cannot be invented often enough. After all, someday something truly new will emerge. In marketing land, this is pretty much the constitution. That is why it is so moving to see how
While 2010 was still the year of PVV positions on culture that were suddenly shared by other parties ("we are abolishing art subsidies"), the year 2011 fell under their implementation. What was striking was the ease with which regional and local administrators also wielded this same machete, as PVV spokesperson Bosma did not fail to testify. For instance, in the municipality of Almelo, 30 % went àff from...
There will definitely be no investigation into a corporatisation of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. According to the proposal, a council majority wants to have the opportunities to earn more money and save on expenses investigated. A political party earlier suggested that many more visitors and revenue could be brought in with a less elitist programme. At the Money Museum in Utrecht
That frightens us quite a bit ourselves. We knew that the Cultural Press Agency was doing pretty well, but we didn't really think a reach of more than 100,000 people was possible. After all, we had done nothing in the way of marketing. Just posting content and not giving away free tickets. And only once something with a bare female breast in it. Enfin....
On radio, the State Secretary for Culture and Education once again reiterated his position that when making cuts, it is good not to know one's field of activity . As an example, he did not know who the painter of "The Scream" is (Edvard Munch) and brought up a definition of culture as a "grab bag": "The beauty of culture is, that...
MuseumgoudA not expelled MuseumgoudA may still remain a member of the Dutch Museum Association (NMV). A majority of the members were still of the opinion in September that the museum should be expelled because it had auctioned Marlene Dumas' The Schoolboys at the end of June without consulting other museums. That is against the NMV's rules. It did, however, decide to change the rules for the...
Tropenmuseum a bit exotic due to international contacts (...) "The Tropenmuseum still seems to be an issue for political The Hague, but I don't hear anything about the library service and the theatre." There seems to be no question of transfer to subsidy by the Ministry of OCW. Heemskerk also wonders whether state secretary Knapen has sufficient insight into the importance of the library. "The library service...
IDFA's jury neatly balanced poetry and politics by awarding among the feature-length documentaries the moving Planet of Snail (South Korea), alongside the Palestinian village-set 5 Broken Cameras, a Palestinian/Israeli/French/Dutch co-production. Planet of Snail by Seung-Jun Yi received the main award, the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary. The fireworks of...
Culture sector already gets hit in 2012: 100 million (...) Already in 2012 at least 100 million will be cut on culture and heritage. Not by Halbe Zijlstra, state secretary for culture, but by municipalities and provinces. (...) The city of [Eindhoven] will cut half a million euros from next year on the culture sector. That's a pittance compared to The Hague, where the arts are in...
Opposition: have arts cuts calculated (...) These are cuts by the state, provinces and municipalities. The aim is to clarify how big the total cuts together are and what exactly the effects will be on supply and employment. (...) "With this request, we want to counter the politics of the short-term agenda. Good policy, including austerity policy, takes into account...
Quality. It is such a nice civil service-political magic word. Sounds good and nobody can be against it. So shout as a politician that you want more quality and all heads start nodding busily. State Secretary for Cultural Affairs Zijlstra also likes quality. Says he. For instance, when it comes to cultural education. In his memorandum More than quality, he says he wants to make work of the...
Far more people waved at the Queen on Princes Day than stood on Malieveld a day earlier to protest against austerity. Why are we unable to revolt? And what can we learn from the Tahrir Square uprising. These were some of the questions that came up during 'Lessons in revolt', the debate...
Holland Festival, Julidans, IT's, Over 't IJ. End-of-season theatre is always strewn across Amsterdam. Between April and September, international performance offerings migrate from Utrecht (Springdance and Festival aan de Werf) via Amsterdam to Rotterdam (Internationale Keuze). If you want to experience something of contemporary, international dance, Springdance, HF and Julidans are the places to be. [For...
Clever, of course, but also perilous. Although - hanging over the abyss - there will be little else to do, but turn the TIN (Theatre Institute of the Netherlands) into a Performing Arts Museum. From 2013, because then the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's money tap will close. In doing so, the institute will implement a rescue plan that will at least save the collection. Whether this will also save the...
Cologne and Paris may not have been built in a day, but it took less than three days to fly to the moon. A warped comparison to say that a show that rattles three days before its premiere can turn out to be an unimaginable hit on the premiere itself. So something like that could happen with The Russians, the latest show
Stronger than ever in recent years, the influence of spin doctors on politics has been noticeable. While at first it was only the PVV, in the person of Martin Bosma, who introduced the American methods of 'framing', it is now also standing Cabinet policy. We all know the Henk and Ingrids, the hardworking Dutch and the head rag tax. And now there is the...
That was a bit of a grind for British theatre critics. The celebrated director Deborah Warner (1959) recently pulled Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal out of the closet. A play from 1777, and an untouchable part of the British theatre canon. Building on the style of her earlier production Mother Courage (2009) Warner also indicated The School for Scandal - goddamn - a quirky, contemporary twist.
"With many video, light, music and noise - like a rock concert, " grins Warner in the office of the Barbican Theatre In London. "Mother Courage had an incredibly populist, exciting atmosphere. I love that arrogant theatricality immensely, and I wanted to continue that style in The School for Scandal. For me, the big challenge was to explore the Brechtian theatre style of Weimar - which I got through Mother Courage had discovered again - to collide with an eighteenth-century theatre text."
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