VIENNA (AFP) ― The sailor-suited Vienna Boys’ Choir, one of Austria’s best-selling musical exports, is facing serious financial problems, its director warned in a newspaper interview Monday.“The Vienna Boys’ Choir is a well-run institution but financial resources are very scarce,” Walter Nettig told the Die Presse daily.The “Wiener Saengerknaben” and an attached school, with roots going back to the 13th century, is classified as a non-profit association. It relies on income from its many concert

BAYREUTH, Germany (AFP) ― Mini versions of Richard Wagner’s best-known works are on offer in Bayreuth this year for those who baulk at the prospect of sitting through operas lasting five hours and more.While Wagnerians from all over the world traipse up to Festspielhaus theater built to the composer’s own designs on the town’s Green Hill, children and opera novices can get a taste for his music in slimmed-down arrangements of two of his greatest masterpieces.The Bayreuth Festival’s highly succes

TV actors should be given their script at least two days before shooting an episode, cast and crew must not shoot for more than 18 hours a day, and broadcasters should pay the cast and crew if their outsourcing production company be unable. These are some of the clauses included in the suggested standard contract between the nation’s broadcasters and outsourcing producers, drawn up by the Culture Ministry and unveiled on Tuesday. “While Korea’s popular culture is a major driving force for hallyu

BEVERLY HILLS, California (AP) ― The “social experiment” that is the CBS television show,’ “Big Brother,” included appalling behavior this season but the network has responded appropriately, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves said Monday.Contestants have been caught on the reality show’s 24-hour-a-day Internet feed making boorish and racially insensitive remarks, and some were aired on one of the show’s TV episodes.“What you see there ... unfortunately is reflective of how certain people feel in America.

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) ― Roger Lewis has hauled his baritone saxophone to gigs in far-flung places, from England to Japan to New Guinea. He’s played so many places he’s lost count of precisely where he’s been. But he’s never forgotten Newport.Lewis, a member of New Orleans’ Dirty Dozen Brass Band, returns to Rhode Island’s city-by-the-sea again this weekend for the Newport Jazz Festival, an event he calls “one of the greatest festivals in the world.’’“I remember listening to that Ray Char

MOSCOW (AFP) ― Russia’s legendary Bolshoi Ballet next week begins a tour to London seeking to show it remains one of the greatest dance companies in the world, despite a season plagued by scandal and the attack on its artistic director.Since the Bolshoi’s first tour to London at the height of the Cold War in 1956, visits to the British capital have been a major calling card and a showcase for its talents.“In Moscow, we are one of the theaterss that people visit. But in London, people have been w

NEW YORK (AFP) ― New Yorkers have been queueing in droves ― sometimes in sweltering temperatures ― for the novel experience of walking through rain without getting wet.The chance comes courtesy of Rain Room, a novel installation by British art collective Random International, at the Museum of Modern Art.Sophisticated motion sensors in the the 460-square-meter space ensure the downpour stops only in the precise position where people are detected.The creators say the set-up affords visitors the se