-- Mad as hell: Artists in Britain continue to protest BP's support of some of London's biggest museums and galleries. (The Guardian)

-- Art giant: Robert Shapazian, the founding director of Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills, has died at age 67. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Nosedive: Shares of Sotheby's tumble more than 8% Thursday on disappointing results from recent auctions. (The Wall Street Journal)

--  Back in business: The Opera Orchestra of New York is returning to the stage after an absence of close to two years. (New York Times)

-- Blockbuster potential: A production of Bizet's "Carmen" is being filmed for eventual screening in 3-D. (The Wall Street Journal)

-- Dropping a few octaves: Placido Domingo is set to make his Covent Garden debut as a baritone. (The Independent)

-- Bright and shiny: An artist in Britain has created a massive public installation using discarded CDs. (BBC News)

-- New leadership: The Boston Lyric Opera has named British conductor David Angus as its new music director. (Boston Globe)

-- Also in the L.A. Times: Theater critic Charles McNulty reviews "In the Heights," starring Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, at the Pantages; an unconventional Michael Jackson art project comes to downtown L.A.

-- David Ng

Photo: A view outside the National Portrait Gallery in London this week. Credit: Akira Suemori / Associated Press

The National Endowment for the Arts' $25,000 NEA Opera Honors lifetime achievement awards for 2010 will go to composer Philip Glass, soprano Martina Arroyo, opera executive David DiChiera and music director Eve Queler.

Ceremonies will be Oct. 22 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, with a video tribute to each recipient and a concert produced by the Washington National Opera.

Glass, 73, has applied his minimalist style to an operatic oeuvre that includes "Einstein on the Beach," "Satyagraha" and "Akhnaten."   "the CIVIL WarS," one of his collaborations with director Robert Wilson, is a 12-hour work originally intended to premiere at the 1984 Olympic Art Festival in Los Angeles until funding fell apart.

DiChiera,  75, played a role in Southern California opera as founding general director of Opera Pacific from 1985 to 1996. While the Costa Mesa company folded under financial strain in 2008, DiChiera continues as general director of Detroit's Michigan Opera Theatre, which he founded in 1970 and led concurrently with his tenure at Opera Pacific.

Arroyo, 74, faced racial barriers early in her career; the daughter of Puerto Rican and African American parents was a teacher and social worker in New York City before getting a break in 1958 in a production at Carnegie Hall. She began performing at the Metropolitan Opera as well, with a 1965 "Aida" her first lead role there. President Ford appointed her to a six-year term on the National Council for the Arts, an advisory body for the NEA.

Queler, 74, is the founding artistic director of the Opera Orchestra of New York, established in 1971.

-- Mike Boehm

Related

Philip Glass to play his music at UCSB concert

Wisdom of Ages

DiChiera's Opera Pacific resignation imminent

Photo: Philip Glass conducts his ensemble and the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009. Credit: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

-- Creepy, but in a good way: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will host the Tim Burton exhibition that ran last year at New York's Museum of Modern Art. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Major win: Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been selected to design a new museum for the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in downtown Berkeley. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Moving on: Michael Wilson, the artistic director of the Hartford Stage, is stepping down after 13 years. (Hartford Courant)

-- Still free: Disgraced art dealer Lawrence Salander manages to avoid jail time for now, but a judge has set an Aug. 3 sentencing date. (New York Post)

-- Conservative mindsets: Bidding remains cautious at Christie's auctions in London. (New York Times)

-- Heroic comeback: A young opera soprano returns to singing after receiving a double-lung transplant. (CNN)

-- Financial hardship: A lack of funds may force the planned Korean War National Museum in Springfield, Ill. to be abandoned. (Fox News)

-- Internal revolt: Employees of the National Museum in Warsaw are rebelling against the director of the museum, Piotr Piotrowski. (The Art Newspaper)

-- Also in the L.A. Times: Times music critic Mark Swed reviews the San Francisco Opera's production of "Die Walkure."

-- David Ng

Photo: Tim Burton, on the set of "Alice in Wonderland." Credit: Leah Gallo / Disney Enterprises

Late Saturday night, Valhalla will fall for the final time in Los Angeles, and the Music Center will send its expensive “Ring” into long (possibly permanent) storage. And that will be that.

But Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung” comes, and it goes, the four-opera cycle ever recycled. Next June will be San Francisco Opera’s turn, and this month the company has unveiled its production of “Die Walküre,” which Wagner called the first part (after the prologue of “Das Rheingold”).

It is tempting to square off California’s two leading cities, since this “Walküre,” which is directed by Francesca Zambello, reverses the cities' cultural stereotypes. In once-provincial L.A., presenting its first “Ring” cycle, we have a production by a Berlin visual and theater artist, an avant-gardist both mystifying and demystifying German mythology. In progressive San Francisco -- where the “Ring” was first done in 1900 when the cycle was as new then as John Adams’ “Nixon in China” is now -- Zambello is producing an “American” interpretation full of Hollywood-familiar images. No guesswork is required.

After 16 months of Wotan, Alberich, Siegfried, Brunnhilde and the gang --who will wrap things up the Los Angeles Opera's "Ring" cycle Wednesday and Saturday with "Siegfried" and "Gotterdammerung"  -- FCLO Music Theatre will open "Ring of Fire" on July 16, and it has nothing to do with Richard Wagner.

The subtitle in Fullerton is "The Johnny Cash Musical Show." While Achim Freyer's staging of "Der Ring Des Nibelungen" has featured a Man in Black -- chief god Wotan in his earthly guise as The Wanderer -- the Fullerton "Ring" is strictly about the country music great.

The jukebox musical, featuring songs from the Cash catalog, was created by musical theater veteran Richard Maltby Jr. and died a quick death on Broadway in 2006. But it has enjoyed an afterlife with Jason Edwards, who starred in the Broadway production and will be on stage in Fullerton. Edwards headlined the first area production last year at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts.

There is undeniable common ground between Wagner's "Ring" and the Cash tribute's title song: love is a burning thing in both.

-- Mike Boehm

Recent and related:

Ring Festival L.A.

Review: `Ring of Fire' at La Mirada Theatre

The voice of Everyman in Black (obituary)

Photo: Jason Edwards (foreground) in a scene from "Ring of Fire" production in La Mirada. Credit: Michael Lamont

 

-- Still giving: BP said it will continue its sponsorship of cultural institutions in Britain -- including the 2012 Olympic Games in London -- despite the on-going oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (Bloomberg)

-- Another extension: The weekend film program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will continue for at least another year, despite underwhelming fund-raising. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Closer look: The authenticity of certain works attributed to Eadweard Muybridge is called into question by a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum. (Modern Art Notes)

-- Biblical proportions: The Vatican said that the earliest known icons of the Apostles Peter and Paul have been discovered in a catacomb under an office building in Rome. (Associated Press)

-- Early adopter: An Australian production wants to be the first-ever iPad opera. (The Age)

-- In the black: The Broadway production of "Red," by John Logan, has recouped its $2.3-million investment. (Playbill)

-- Major gift: A 10,000-piece collection of Jewish art and artifacts from the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley is moving to UC Berkeley, thanks to a $2.5-million gift. (Associated Press, via San Jose Mercury News)

-- Public art: A sculpture in Derry, Ireland, memorializing Bloody Sunday has been vandalized. (Irish Times)

-- Raking it in: A sale of photographs by Ansel Adams and Lucas Samaras has set artist records at a Sotheby's auction of the Polaroid corporate collection. (Associated Press)

-- Also in the L.A. Times: Times art critic Christopher Knight on the paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Getty; Raul Esparza and Brooke Shields will star in the musical "Leap of Faith" at the Ahmanson Theatre.

-- David Ng

Photo: The box office at LACMA. Credit: Ringo H.W. Chiu / For The Times

With his loose cream-colored suit, red and white high-tops, short fluffy beard and hair braided into two tight strands running down his broad back, Geoff “Double G” Gallegos hardly looked like the stereotypical symphonic conductor. While bouncing on the podium, he vigorously waved at the rows of musicians before him who swayed with their instruments. Full sections of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion were represented, plus turntables, keyboards and electric guitars. Behind Gallegos, at the front of the stage, young men in baggy jeans and bright T-shirts bobbed their heads furiously as they rapped and sang.  Mixing hip-hop and rap with symphonic sounds might be a surprising blend, but it sure made for an energetic show.

Several hundred people gathered Saturday night at California Plaza in downtown L.A. to see Gallegos lead the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra in a performance of “Gangsta Wagner.”

The show was offered by the summer concert series Grand Performances as part of the city-wide "Ring"  festival. Intending to enhance, expand and explicate the Los Angeles Opera production of Wagner’s “Der Ring Des Nibelungen,” the festival features a multi-venue collaboration of lectures, films, live performances and more. Grand Performances wanted to participate by offering something more for the general public than the audience of opera aficionados.

The result was “Gangsta Wagner,” composed, arranged and orchestrated by Gallegos.  Despite studying the classics at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Gallegos confessed to being unfamiliar with Wagner when Grand Performances commissioned the work. He said during the performance that, “I only knew the part in 'Apocalypse Now' when they go charging into the jungle,” referring to "Ride of the Valkyries."  But in learning about Wagner, Gallegos came to admire the composer’s innovative music, saying, “People who think outside the box usually get persecuted.”

Creating larger-than-life characters for a new opera is no easy task, but composer Peter Ash says that the five lucky kids who populate Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” were so operatic, the question of what vocal types each of the children should be almost answered itself.

“First of all, it seemed clear Charlie had to be a boy treble, and the others should be adult singers,” Ash explains.  He and librettist Donald Sturrock felt strongly about Augustus Gloop: “It was clear that he was a fat boy, he needed to be a big, self-important tenor.”

“Then Violet Beauregarde, she blows up into a blueberry and has a coloratura tantrum — she had to be a soprano,” the composer adds, “and Veruca Salt. She’s a spoiled brat who wants to be Violet?  Well, she’s a mezzo-soprano.”  Finally there’s Mike Teavee: “Let’s see…he’s violence-obsessed, slightly underdeveloped?  The obvious character type, Handelian counter-tenor.”

Click here to read my Arts & Books story about how Los Angeles played a key part in the 13-year adventure of bringing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to the opera house.

--James C. Taylor

Photo: Daniel Okulitch as Willy Wonka with the Chorus of Oompa Loompas in Opera Theatre of St. Louis' production of "The Golden Ticket." Credit: Ken Howard

The Guns 'n' Roses front man W. Axl Rose had another way of talking about what happens when a singer gives a crowd his all. "I usually have to have someone stand beside me when I come offstage, because I can't even tie my own shoes," he once told an interviewer. The idea that a performance could imperil the artist in this way -- pushing them so hard that they're trembling and nearly incoherent --  is what makes certain kinds of pop music exciting. James Brown ritualistically collapsed at the end of every show. Elvis Presley passed out handkerchiefs christened in his sweat.

Here's where opera really meets pop, or at least the ecstatic popular music of the rock and soul era: at the point where decorum dissolves in the frenzy of bodily self-expression. Achim Freyer's production of the four-opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen" with Los Angeles Opera makes intense demands on its artists, and never so much as in "Götterdämmerung," the longest and most melodramatic of the cycle's works.

-- Major commission: Architect Frank Gehry is set to work on a major redesign of the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. (Sydney Morning Herald)

-- Money woes: Documents filed by the Metropolitan Opera for the fiscal year that ended July 2009 show that the company is continuing to struggle financially. (Associated Press)

-- Public art: Chinese artist Zhang Huan's Buddha sculpture in San Francisco has become a target for taggers. (San Francisco Chronicle)

-- Change of pace: Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of "Slumdog Millionaire," will stage the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. (BBC News)

-- Old bones: Researchers believe they have found the remains of the artist Caravaggio. (The Globe and Mail)

-- Trending upward: The Spoleto Festival USA has exceeded its box-office goals for this year. (The Post and Courier)

-- Music behind bars: A prison orchestra in the Philippines has given its first concert. (Associated Press)

-- Better to give: Eli Broad has backed an initiative by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates for wealthy Americans to give at least half of their fortunes to charity. (Bloomberg)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Times pop music critic Ann Powers reviews Sting's collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl; Haniwa Horse could become 'a new icon' of LACMA's Japanese art collection; the Tony-winning creative team behind the Broadway production of "Red" will tackle Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" in Houston.

-- David Ng

Photo: Frank Gehry. Credit: Frank Gehry