LONDON'S COVENT GARDEN, home of the Royal Opera, will close from July 1997 to the fall of 1999, for extensive remodeling and updating.
"It's a miracle that we do what we do," said Jeremy Isaacs, the opera house's general director, noting that Covent Garden still presents 260 to 270 opera and ballet productions each year. "We work the stage entirely by manual labor. It is clumsy, inefficient, ineffective, expensive."The planned renovation includes putting in new machinery to replace manual means, rewiring, doubling the height of the fly tower and replacing old stage machinery. Sightlines for ticket holders in the 800-seat top balcony should be improved. The cost is projected to come from a new national lottery, and the issue is whether money spent by the "poor" on lottery tickets should end up subsidizing "rich" operagoers. The cost is estimated at $290 million, and a temporary home must be found during the interim.
- VISITORS TO PARIS this summer may not hear opera in the renowned Palais Garnier, which is closed for renovations. But in the gilded rotunda they can see a display of 200 dazzling costumes, worn by stars of the century's most famous opera and ballet productions.
Mannequins stand on the stairs, lean over balconies and sit in cozy niches all over the lobby. "I wanted installation of the costumes to suggest the days when people went to the opera not only to see but to be seen," said Alain Germain, a choreographer who installed the exhibition. Some costumes are by renowned designers, but mostly it is a tribute to anonymous dressmakers who worked magic with feathers, pearls and rhinestones, said Martine Kahane, the opera's cultural director.
- MET TITLES, the Metropolitan Opera's new simultaneous translation device, make their first appearance at an Oct. 2 performance of Verdi's "Otello," which will open the 1995-96 season. Small electronic screens are attached to the backs of the seats. They have individual controls so operagoers who don't want to use them can turn them off and filters that make them invisible to viewers in adjacent seats. The cost is approximately $2 million.
- JANE ALEXANDER, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, composer Gian Carlo Menotti and Ikuo Hirayama, dean of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, have announced the names of the arts organizations to which they will donate the $25,000 prize each received for winning the 1995 Montblanc de la Culture award for outstanding arts patronage.
Alexander's gift will go to WritersCorps, a program dedicated to combating illiteracy in South Bronx, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Menotti gave his to his own foundation, the Yester Theatre Trust, to underwrite music scholarships; and Hirayama dedicated his to organizations that will use the money to preserve cultural ruins around the world.
- DAVID NIXON, recently appointed ballet master of the Ballet Der Deutschen Oper in Berlin, has also been named artistic director of BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. He will take over his American post in July after his contract with BDO expires.
Nixon, 35, born in Windsor, Ontario, was a principal dancer with BDO 1985-90, before which he danced with National Ballet of Canada. He has also choreographed for these and other European companies. He brings with him his American wife, noted ballerina Yoko Ichino, who will probably teach at the BalletMet Academy.
The company underwent trauma last spring when artistic director John McFall departed, and 10 top dancers resigned. (Among them was Donna Patzius, now a soloist with Ballet West.) Meanwhile, McFall has been appointed new artistic director of Atlanta Ballet.
- THE PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY has named Mariss Jansons as its new music director, effective in the 1997-98 season. Jansons has been music director of the Oslo Philharmonic since 1979, has gained worldwide attention and praise through his guest conducting of many top orchestra, touring, recordings and radio and television appearances. He will be music director designate in 1996-97. Jansons will succeed Lorin Maazel, who will step down in August 1996 to devote more time to composing.
- DANIEL BARENBOIM and the Chicago Symphony are touring Japan for the fourth time since 1977. Nine performances are scheduled, five in Tokyo and one each in Osaka, Niigata, Hamamatsu and Takamatsu. Three of the Tokyo concerts are part of the first Pierre Boulez Festival, which was organized to honor the composer during his 70th birthday year. Boulez, new principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony, will conduct one festival concert and join Barenboim for a performance of the Bartok Piano Concerto No. 1.
- LUCIA DLUGOSZEWSKI, avant garde composer and longtime companion of modern dancer and company director Erick Hawkins, was also his wife, a fact that came to light only after Hawkins' death last November. She has been suggested as the one most likely to carry on his company. The two worked together for more than 30 years.
- YURI GRIGOROVICH, 68, artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet for three decades, submitted his resignation following months of conflict with management. He said he may seek a job with a ballet company in the West.
Many critics blame the strong-willed director for the artistic decline of one of the world's leading ballet companies, which has suffered in recent years from insufficient funding, internal bickering and the flight of talent abroad. Also, the 218-year-old theater building in central Moscow needs $300 million in repairs.
The last straw was when dancer and director Vladimir Vasilyev, who left the Bolshoi some years ago after clashing with Grigorovich, was named the theater's artistic director.
- PETER OUNDJIAN, first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet, took a year's sabbatical from his quartet duties effective June 1. A strain in his left hand, attributed to an intense concert and recording schedule, was cited.
He was replaced for the year by Andrew Dawes, former first violinist of the Orford Quartet.
- THE ARTS HAVE LOST: Ulysses Kay, 78, in Englewood, N.J. of Parkinson's disease. Kay was a prolific composer of operas, orchestral works, choral, chamber and film compositions. . . . Master piano teacher Adele Marcus, 89, in Manhattan. Marcus taught mainly at the Juilliard School (1954-1990). A child prodigy, she concertized little, studied with Josef Lhevinne and Artur Schnabel. Pupils included Horacio Gutierrez, Byron Janis, Panayis Lyras, among others. . . . Louis Krasner, 91, in Brookline Mass. A Russian-born violinist, he premiered the Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg violin concertos; champion of 20th-century music. . . . international teacher Bonnie Bird, 80, of cancer, in Tiburon, Calif. She danced with Martha Graham in the '30s, taught Merce Cunningham, had John Cage and Lou Harrison as pianists. . . . Prolific choreographer and dancer Talley Beatty, 72, of diabetes, in Manhattan.