Saturday 30 August 2008

Another Wagner joins leadership bid for Bayreuth

FRANKFURT, Germany �

As the annual Bayreuth Festival moves toward its conclusion later this week, the real drama is flowering behind the scenes over a replacement to 89-year-old director Wolfgang Wagner.


The furore increased Monday with news that Nike Wagner, the great granddaughter of the composer Richard Wagner, had teamed with Belgian theater director Gerard Mortier to apply for the job. Nike's bid rivals an sooner bid by two of her cousins - the daughters of current director Wolfgang Wagner.


The festival confirmed receiving the Wagner-Mortier application, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had reported, only offered no further comment.


Mortier, who helped bring about a successful resurgence of the Salzburg Festival in neighboring Austria, is to become general manager and artistic conductor of the New York City Opera in the fall of 2009. He is in his concluding season as head of the Paris Opera.


"While Gerard has no sense of what the outcome of this proposition will be, he was actually eagre to participate in the challenge and the chance," said Pascal Nadon, a spokesman for Mortier. "He's confident that success would enhance the reputation and reach of New York City Opera in the international opera house world, so for us it's very exciting. If we would dig and look into dual opera house leadership, we could find many examples of very efficient partnerships."


Richard Wagner founded the festival in 1872 and his grandsons, Wolfgang and Wieland, took charge of the festival in 1951. After the end of Wieland - Nike's father - Wolfgang became the sole director in 1967 only he proclaimed in later April that he would quit the director's post at the end of August.


His daughters Katharina, 30, and her elder half sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 63, submitted an lotion for joint leadership.


An official decision on who will take over the festival is non expected until after this year's event ends Aug. 28. The festival card of directors is typeset to meet Sept. 1.


Speculation about the festival's future leadership has swirled since the death last November of Wolfgang Wagner's second wife and longtime helper, Gudrun. For years, Wolfgang insisted that she submit over from him and if not, then their daughter Katharina.


In 2001, the festival's plank of directors, which includes federal, Bavarian state government and Bayreuth city officials, tried to force Wagner to stair down by naming Wagner-Pasquier to take over.


But he refused to leave, contestation his life-time contract gave him restraint over the opera business firm where the festival is staged each summer.


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On the Net:


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Wednesday 20 August 2008

Hostesses outclass cheerleaders at Games

Forget the skimpily clad cheerleaders. The immaculate hostesses handing verboten medals at the Olympics have won the watcher vote for glamour.



Wearing Chinese silk dresses with their hair pulled back tightly into neat buns, the hostesses are beautiful, elegant and their eyes are three-tenths the length of their faces, as required by the Chinese selection committee.


"They ar so pretty and accurate. They smile continuously," aforesaid Debra Sinex, a tourer from Atlanta, Georgia, in Beijing for the Olympics.


At every laurel wreath ceremony sise or more hostesses ar on duty.


Two wearing "cheongsam"�- tenacious dresses�- bandstand either side of the podium spell three or more in knee-length dresses hold platters bearing the medals and bouquets of nine redness roses, with red a lucky colouring material in China and nine meaning everlasting.


But although the role looks simple, in line with China's conjure to host the perfect Games, these hostesses receive been meticulously chosen and trained.


When Olympic organisers started a search for the hostesses they issued a list of requirements for appearance and body condition that was published by Chinese media, raising eyebrows in the West because of the sexist and stereotype overtones.


Many were likewise upset by China's decision to ingest a pretty little young woman lip-synching a song at the possibility ceremony simply because the real vocalist had corrupt teeth.


Hostess candidates have to be university educated, aged 18 to 24, betwixt 1.68 and 1.78 metres in stature, with a "ruddy and shiny complexion", "elastic skin" and "a plump but not juicy body".


Their faces needed to meet standards including the ratio 'tween the "breadth of the nose and the length of the face" and "width of the oral fissure and width between the pupils", with eyes three-tenths the length of the face.


From about 5,000 applications, 297 candidates were chosen from a twelve Beijing colleges and 40 students from Shanghai to be "Olympic victory ceremony volunteers".


Five serial publication of costumes were designed for the hostesses to wear at the 302 Olympic and 471 Paralympic medal ceremonies, each for different sports and featuring traditional Chinese images such as blue-and-white porcelain, embroidery and jade.


The women have been through thorough preparation at a kind of charm thrill camp, encyclopaedism to stand for hours in high-heels and honing the pure smile exposing eight dentition by expenditure hours before a mirror with a chopstick 'tween their teeth.


"In the standing sessions, we have to stand still and smile for half an time of day or more. We too run about a chiliad metres every day for physical conditioning," one of the hostesses, Ma Sha, 20, told Reuters in front of the Games.








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