The prestigious Berlin Philharmonic orchestra plans a major tour of Southeast Asia in November with its music director Simon Rattle, during which it will visit Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea.
Rattle, the British conductor who took over as music director of the orchestra in 2002, told a news conference the tour would embrace Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul.
Rattle said the orchestra was also looking forward to returning to play in the Chinese capital Beijing, which it last visited in 1977 under the baton of Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan.
PHOTO: AP
In Berlin, the highlight of the season will be a performance of Richard Wagner's monumental tetraology Der Ring des Nibelungen, which the orchestra last played in the early 1970s, under Von Karajan.
Michael Jackson's ex-wife Debbie Rowe will be allowed to deliver potentially explosive testimony against the star at his child sex trial, the judge has ruled.
The key ruling came as prosecutors prepared to wrap up their nine-week case against the "King of Pop," opening the way for the defense to hit back at the charges against him.
PHOTO: AP
"I will admit testimony in that case" from Rowe, Judge Rodney Melville said, adding that he would seek ways to limit the scope of her evidence after defense attorneys warned that it would open "a giant can of worms."
Prosecutor Ron Zonen said Rowe would tell jurors that Jackson asked her to make a video praising him in early 2003 and told her she would be allowed to visit her children if she did.
Zonen said Rowe's testimony would show how the Jackson camp "used children like pawns" to elicit enthusiastic positive statements about the beleaguered pop icon.
Extracts of Rowe's interview were played on a US television show that Jackson had made following the broadcast of a damaging British documentary in February 2003. The documentary sparked the child sex investigation against him.
Rowe, who met Jackson when she worked in his dermatologist's office, was married to the pop icon from 1996 to 1999 and bore him two children whom she agreed not to contact when she terminated her parental rights in 2001.
Also, on Monday, former Neverland security guard Kassim Abdool cried on the witness stand as he described alleged threats to his family after he testified in 1994 about earlier allegations of child abuse against Jackson.
"They threatened to kill me and my family," said the white-bearded witness, after swabbing his eyes with a tissue, describing a welter of phone calls to his home.
Jackson, 46, has denied 10 charges, including molestation, plying the cancer patient with alcohol to seduce him and plotting to kidnap the boy and his family in February and March of 2003.
British pop star Elton John intends to marry his long term partner David Furnish some time this year or next year, his publicist said Monday. The singer told the Mirror tabloid that he and Furnish wanted to hold a civil partnership ceremony in Windsor, near London, in mid-December, although publicist Gary Farrow said John had added it could take place some time next year.
The Interpreter, a political thriller set at the UN, took top honors at the North American box office over the weekend, beating two other new wide release films that made their way into the top 10 lineup. The PG13-rated film marks the return of director Sydney Pollack after a six-year hiatus. It drew US$22.8 million in ticket sales, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
The University of Texas has acquired the papers of Pulitzer-prize winning author Norman Mailer for US$2.5 million.
Mailer's archives contain 10,000 letters, the manuscripts of all but one of his more than 40 books, research materials, photographs, tax and business records and a number of Mailer's unpublished short stories, journals, essays, notes, and screenplays. It also contains the manuscript of his first, unpublished novel No Percentage, written in the early 1940s.
Mailer said the time he spent in Texas training for the US Army during World War II influenced his decision to place his archive at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center.
"A man who went to a famous prep school in the early 1920s said afterward, `It was the worst experience of my life and the most valuable.' I can say the same about my time in the US Army," Mailer said in a statement.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located