Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Los Angeles Opera to present Puccini’s ‘Madama Butterfly’ reimagined on film soundstage
The Los Angeles Opera opens its 2024-25 season Sept. 21 with Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” reimagined in a film studio and said Saturday it will present the company premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” while reducing its offerings from six main-stage productions to five.
Mario Gras’s “Butterfly” staging, first seen at Madrid’s Teatro Real in 2017, stars Karah Son as Cio-Cio-San and Jonathan Tetelma as Pinkerton in their company debuts. James Conlon conducts in the start of his 19th season as music director.
“Because it’s set on this vintage Hollywood soundstage, the director, Martin Gas, he contextualizes the ersatz vision of Japan because he puts a frame around it,” LA Opera CEO Christopher Koelsch said. “Because of the Hollywood connection, even though it was not conceived for us, it feels particularly apt for this city.”
Manson completes community service sentence for blowing nose on videographer
CONCORD, N.H. | Marilyn Manson, who was sentenced to community service for blowing his nose on a videographer at a 2019 concert in New Hampshire, recently completed his time at an organization that provides meeting space for Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, according to court paperwork.
The shock rocker, 55, spent 20 hours last month at the Windsor Club of Glendale, a California nonprofit that provides meeting locations for Alcoholics Anonymous and families of alcoholics to “achieve a more meaningful life through recovery,” according to the group’s website.
A certificate of completion was filed by the Assistance League of Los Angeles with a New Hampshire court on Jan. 30. Manson had to file proof of his service by Feb. 4.
Manson, whose legal name is Brian Warner, pleaded no contest in September to the misdemeanor charge in Laconia, about 30 miles north of Concord, the state capital.
A no contest plea means Manson did not contest the charge and did not admit guilt.
He initially was charged with two misdemeanor counts of simple assault stemming from the encounter with the videographer at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion in Gilford on Aug. 19, 2019. The second charge, alleging that he spit on the videographer, was dropped.
Manson also was fined. He needs to remain arrest-free and notify local police of any New Hampshire performances for two years.
Prosecutor Andrew Livernois had said it was his first offense and he had no prior record.
Manson initially pleaded not guilty to both charges in 2021. His lawyer had said that the type of filming the videographer was doing commonly exposes videographers to “incidental contact” with bodily fluids.
Manson emerged as a musical star in the mid-1990s, known as much for courting public controversy as for hit songs like “The Beautiful People” and hit albums like 1996’s “Antichrist Superstar” and 1998’s “Mechanical Animals.”
Last year, a California judge threw out key sections of Manson’s lawsuit against his former fiancée, “Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood, claiming she fabricated public allegations that he sexually and physically abused her during their relationship and encouraged other women to do the same. He is appealing the ruling. The judge recently ruled that Manson cover Wood’s legal fees, according to Rolling Stone.
Manson’s lawsuit, filed last year, alleges that Wood and another woman named as a defendant, Illma Gore, defamed Manson, intentionally caused him emotional distress and derailed his career in music, TV and film.
Several women have sued Manson in recent years with allegations of sexual and other abuse. Most have been dismissed or settled, including a suit filed by “Game of Thrones” actor Esmé Bianco.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.
Hasty Pudding honors Barry Keoghan as its Man of the Year
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. | Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals roasted Barry Keoghan, best known for his roles in “Dunkirk,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “Eternals,” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” on Friday with its 2024 Man of the Year Award.
Keoghan, who also starred in the comedy psychological thriller “Saltburn” and the World War II drama series “Masters of The Air,” was presented with a pudding pot before being invited to attend a performance of Hasty Pudding’s 175th production “Heist Heist Baby!”
During the roast, Keoghan, who is Irish, was pressed into a boxing match with “Mr. Irish Potato Famine,” played by an actor in a comically oversized suit and hat. He also participated in an awkward romantic comedy scene at the end of which he planted his face in a dish of spaghetti.
Keoghan, who acted in “The Eternals” about a race of immortal beings, confessed during the roast that his favorite Avenger was the Hulk and then changed it to Iron Man when he briefly thought Robert Downey Jr., the actor who plays Iron Man, was in the audience.
And at the end of the roast, the BAFTA award winning Keoghan was presented with a “BAFTUB” award – a bathtub-sized award that Keoghan climbed into — before being forced to don a bra adorned with cartons of Morton Salt and cardboard flames.
Speaking to reporters after the roast, Keoghan said he was honored to be in the same category of the other actors who have received the award.
“I’ve seen Paul Newman’s name and some of the others,” he said. “It’s just an honor isn’t it?”
Keoghan joked about spending time in Harvard Square and at the prestigious university before receiving the award. “I automatically feel more intelligent being here,” he said.
He also offered a quip about “Saltburn” — which includes a scene where Keoghan performs a nude dance.
“It’s definitely a family movie,” he said.
Annette Bening, a two-time Golden Globe winner who recently received her fifth Oscar nomination, was named Thursday as the 2024 Woman of the Year.
Hasty Pudding Theatricals, which dates to 1844 and calls itself the third-oldest theater group in the world, has handed out a Man of the Year Award since 1967. Last year’s recipient was Bob Odenkirk, who reprised the role of Saul Goodman in “Better Call Saul,” which earned him three Critics Choice TV awards and multiple Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations.
Past recipients of the Man of the Year Award include Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds.
Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ 2024 Woman of the Year Award dates to 1951.
Bening, who also has won a Screen Actors Guild Award and starred in “The Grifters” and “American Beauty,” earned her fifth Oscar nomination, this one for best actress, for playing the prickly long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad in the movie “Nyad.”
The awards are given out to people who have made lasting and impressive contributions to the world of entertainment.
A painting by René Magritte may fetch $64 million at an auction marking a century of surrealism
LONDON | A major work by surrealist painter René Magritte that hasn’t been shown in public for a quarter century could fetch 50 million pounds at auction next month.
Christie’s auction house announced Saturday that it will offer “L’ami intime” (The Intimate Friend) at a March 7 sale in London marking a century of the surrealist movement in art.
The painting includes several of the Belgian artist’s signature motifs, including a bowler-hatted man and fluffy white clouds on a blue sky. In this painting, completed in 1958, the man is shown from behind, facing out over a hilly landscape. A baguette and a wine glass hover in the foreground.
Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman for Impressionist and modern art, said the “highly poetic, highly dreamy” painting is among the handful of most important Magritte works in private hands. Last exhibited publicly in Brussels in 1998, it’s being auctioned for the first time since 1980, and has a pre-sale estimate of between 30 million and 50 million pounds.
This year marks the centenary of Andre Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto,” which defined a revolutionary artistic movement characterized by unsettling juxtapositions and paradoxical statements — as in Magritte’s most famous work, a painting of a pipe titled “This is not a pipe.”
“Now it’s become usual to think of the subconscious, psychology, psychoanalysis — but they were the one who opened the doors,” Camu said.
Camu said Magritte, who died in 1967, has become the most “in-demand” of all the surrealists. Unlike the work of contemporaries such as Salvador Dali, there are few specific cultural or religious references to be found in his work.
“Magritte never explained anything,” Camu said — even the titles of his paintings were suggested by friends.
“There’s no sign of religion in Magritte ever, or particular history, or anything,” he said. “They are totally conceptual, clean, powerful, disturbing, wonderful, silent pictures. They are accessible to everybody.”
That claim is backed up by soaring prices for Magritte’s work in recent years, hitting a record 59.4 million pounds ($79.8 million at the time) for “L’empire des lumières” (The Empire of Light) at a Sotheby’s auction in 2022.
The work up for sale in March comes from the collection of the late Gilbert Kaplan — founder of the publication Institutional Investor — and his wife, Lena Kaplan.
The painting will be on display before the sale at Christie’s in Los Angeles Feb 3, 5 and 6, in New York Feb 9-14, in Hong Kong Feb 21-23 and in London March 1-7.
—From AP reports
