(Photo by © Lisa Tomasetti 2010)

“It’s an absolute privilege, and it’s wonderful to be juxtaposed against all the other extraordinary things that you program for the Lincoln Center Festival,” actress Cate Blanchett told Nigel Redden, the director of the Festival, on bringing the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Uncle Vanya to Lincoln Center this July. “Often when theater is talked about in New York, it is talked about as if it were a sort of homogeneous blob. There are so many different types of audiences in New York, and we are very excited to be there in a festival context because it generates a way of looking for an audience that’s very different than if we were doing a four-month run. There is a special, ‘see it now or you miss it’ feeling that we are all very excited by.”

Don’t miss Uncle Vanya July 19-28 at New York City Center as part of Lincoln Center Festival.

“Sometimes you find the most interesting things in the oddest places,” Elizabeth Kerri Mahon recently wrote on the acclaimed Scandalous Women blog that focuses on influential women in history. “For example, I was perusing Time Out New York at work today (because I was bored) when I saw an ad for the Lincoln Center Festival. What really caught my eye was the title Émilie. For some reason, I just assumed that it had to be about one of my favorite Scandalous Women, Émilie du Châtelet. And I was right.”

Composer Kaija Saariaho’s Émilie will come to the Gerald W. Lynch Theater on July 19-22.

(Photo by © Julia Lynn)

More Feng Yi Ting news from Gramophone’s Olivia Giovetti:

“What’s engrossing was the music, laden with conflict and fraught with tension. Soprano Shen Tiemei and tenor Jiang Qihu sang in the traditional Peking and Sichuan operatic style. However, their stratospheric pitches and constricted tones clashed beautifully with a more typically Western score that blends a traditional orchestra with native instruments like the pipa and erhu. Deep rumbles arrive simultaneously knotted and untangled. Like Glass’s music, Feng Yi Ting (running until June 7 and stopping in New York at the Lincoln Center Festival, also under Redden’s directorship, in July) is characterised by an emotional neutrality that leaves the audiences to decide for themselves how they feel.”

(Photo by © Julia Lynn)

“Egoyan is a master storyteller, and he is the real auteur of this production, as he was able to capture the concept of the score and blow it up on the stage and screen, using technology seamlessly, with an eye and sensibility that channeled Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone,” wrote The Post and Courier in its review of Feng Yi Ting at The Spoleto Festival.

Guo Wenjing’s production will come to Lincoln Center Festival on July 26-28.

(Photo by © Keith Pattison)

JUST RELEASED: Symposium on playwright Tom Murphy at Fordham University complements Lincoln Center Festival schedule

A highlight of Lincoln Center Festival will be DruidMurphy, three plays (Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark, and Famine) by Tom Murphy, staged by Garry Hynes for Druid Theatre Company from July 5 to 14 in the Gerald W. Lynch Theater. The plays will be performed by an ensemble cast of 16 actors, namely: Niall Buggy, Edward Clayton, Beth Cooke, Brian Doherty, Gavin Drea, Garrett Lombard, Treasa Ní Mhiolláin, Aaron Monaghan, Marie Mullen, Michael Glenn Murphy, Rory Nolan, John Olohan, Frank O’Sullivan, Marty Rea, Eileen Walsh and Joseph Ward.

To complement these performances, Fordham University’s Institute of Irish Studies, The Galway University Foundation and the National University of Ireland, Galway will host an all-day symposium on July 11 from 1 to 6:30 PM at Keogh Studio Theater, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, 113 W. 60th Street at Ninth Avenue. Scholars and theater experts will discuss the enormous influence of Tom Murphy on Irish and American cultural memories of immigration and of famine. The afternoon of lectures and panels will culminate in an on-stage interview with Druid Theatre founders, Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen. The event is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served. There are no reservations.

(Read the entire press release here.)

Paris Opera Ballet will hold open auditions for its Corps de ballet on June 14 at the Palais Garnier. Dancers between ages 16 to 26 who registered by the March 29 deadline will be vying for a place with the company that gave birth to ballet. Here’s the posting on the Ballet’s website which includes videos of the required variations demonstated by Marie-Agnès Gillot and Adrien Bodet.  See Etoile, Marie-Agnès in leading roles in Orpheus and Eurydice and Bolero at Lincoln Center Festival this July.

(Photo courtesy of Curtis Mayfield Estate)

JUST RELEASED: Sinéad O’Connor and other artists have been added to the Curtis Mayfield tribute concert at Lincoln Center Festival 2012.

The lineup for the Lincoln Center Festival tribute to the late soul music icon Curtis Mayfield has been expanded with the addition of artists Sinéad O’Connor, Bilal, Meshell Ndegeocello, William Bell, Ryan Montbleau and Inyang Bassey.

This one-time-only event takes place on July 20 at 8 p.m. in Avery Fisher Hall. Previously announced performers include The Impressions, Mavis Staples, Aloe Blacc, Kyp Malone and Tune Adebimpe, Dr. Lonnie Smith and a 14-piece house band led by music director Binky Griptite of the Dap-Kings.

(Read the entire press release here.)

(Photo by Todd White Photography, © Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and White Cube, Masonʼs Yard, London)

JUST RELEASED: Christian Marclay’s celebrated work The Clock comes to Lincoln Center this summer; free and open to the Public

Following acclaimed showings in London, Seoul, Moscow, Paris, Boston, Los Angeles, Ottawa and Sydney, and last summer’s Golden Lion award for best art work at the Venice Biennale, Christian Marclay’s epic video installation, The Clock, returns to New York City with a free showing from mid-July to early August at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. The Clock is on loan from the collection of Jill and Peter Kraus. The exhibition will take place during Lincoln Center Festival 2012.

Dates and hours for The Clock will be announced shortly. Please visit: http://lincolncenterfestival.org/index.php/2012-the-clock for updates. Admission is FREE, on a first-come, first-served basis.

(Read the entire press release here.)