Q: When is an opera not an opera? A: When it's a Broadway show. Q: Then when is a Broadway show not a Broadway show? A: When it's an opera. Q: So how do you tell the difference? A: That's a tough question. These days, a very tough question. For too long "opera" has been narrowly + defined as what goes on at the Metropolitan Opera House; a rigid distinction between art and entertainment, fervently defended by a musical flat-earth ...

The Force is definitely with Travis Ho. Like millions of computer-science students before him, the 19-year-old Singaporean's lifelong fantasy has been to work for Lucasfilm, the empire launched 30 years ago by George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars. Ho, however, did not have to journey to a galaxy far, far away; Lucasfilm came looking for him. Eighteen months ago, the digital-art powerhouse launched its first overseas studio in Singapore. The 170 employees come from 33 nations, and together they ...

French authorities expressed solidarity with Roman Polanski's family Monday after authorities arrested the filmmaker on a 1970s sexual-offense charge involving a 13-year-old girl. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he hoped authorities would respect Polanski's rights "and that the affair (will) come to a favorable resolution," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The French culture and communications minister, Frederic Mitterrand, said he "learned with astonishment" of Polanski's arrest. He expressed solidarity with Polanski's family and said "he wants to ...

Going into The September Issue, a documentary chronicling the production of a single, record-breakingly huge issue of Vogue in 2007, we already knew that the magazine's editor, Anna Wintour, wears Prada, drinks Starbucks and favors sunglasses indoors and that her weapon of choice is more frosty glare than flaming pitchfork. In the course of the documentary, she reveals her eyes , her teeth and what she believes to be her greatest vulnerability: her children. The last is ...

For eight years now, the New York Asian Film Festival has earned "Wow"s and "Huh?"s from Manhattan audiences with its savory mix of action and art-house works from the continent that produces more movies than any other. In its scope and vigor, this is the New York film festival, and it's run not by a heavily subsidized arts institution but by a few knowledgeable guys from Brooklyn who want to share their enthusiasms with the fanboys of the ...

"Gauguin was a revolutionary," says my tour guide Tim as we drive through the rainforests of Hiva Oa. "He fought against the local church, he fought for the rights of us Marquesans. He lived according to his own values, and we appreciate him here still." With ornate geometrical tattoos covering his body, Tim is not the kind of guy you'd expect to wax poetically about a 19th century French painter. But then Hiva Oa is not your run-of-the-mill tourist ...

It's an old parlor game: Can you name 10 famous Belgians? Belgium is a tiny nation, and often the butt of its neighbors' jokes, but it can claim two 20th-century artistic giants who would make it onto that list: Hergé — or at least his globetrotting comic strip character Tintin — and René Magritte, the subversive surrealist painter. Both created iconic images that are recognizable the world over. And now both, finally, have museums celebrating their contributions to art. ...

People in the '70s knew two things about Marilyn Chambers: that she had appeared as a model on an Ivory Snow box, fondly holding an infant under the corporate slogan "99 and 44/100% Pure"; and that she starred in Behind the Green Door, one of the first, weirdest and most popular hard-core movies in that brief period of the '70s known as Porno Chic. These two factettes, with their colliding irony, made the blond, willowy Chambers the pin-up princess ...

There is flattery, there is shameless flattery, and there are conversations with Arianna Huffington. She'll talk to old men about their libido, beautiful women about their intelligence, the unemployed about their talent and the wealthy about their artistic depth. In her hands, a compliment is the social equivalent of a Tomahawk missile, launched in stealth at a heavily researched target and perilously difficult to defend against. As recently as five years ago, this ability — plus a native braininess and ...

Outsiders may debate whether bullfighting is sport or art, but within the normally close circle of Spanish aficionados, there is only one correct answer, and it has nothing to do with basketball. Yet if bullfighting is an art, does that make all its practitioners artists? Most definitely not, has been the answer of many bullfighting insiders ever since Spanish Culture Minister César Antonio Molina announced on Feb. 27 that this year's prestigious Fine Arts medal for bullfighting would go ...