News: Cameron Mackintosh, oligarch art, Stevie Wonder and the New York Times

Today's arts news and gossip 

CAMERON MACKINTOSH, known for producing popular musicals such as "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera", has signed an agreement with the China Arts and Entertainment Group to bring Broadway musicals to China. These won't be the first musicals in China, but they will be the first to offer a wide range of ticket prices, making the shows more accessible and more profitable. "Les Miserables" will premier at the National Grand Theatre in Beijing in the fall of 2008, followed by "Mamma Mia".

An auction of the art collection of Mstislav Rostropovich, a Russia musician, was cancelled because Alisher Usmanov, a Russian oligarch, bought everything for over £25m. Mr Usmanov plans to return the pieces to Russia and to reimburse Sotheby's for the price of the auction's preparation. Rostropovich, who died earlier this year, owned quite a few national treasures, including "The Face of Russia", one of seven paintings by Boris Dmitrievich Grigoriev, and some glass owned by Catherine the Great.

To a crowd of 4,000 fans in Baltimore this weekend, Stevie Wonder gave a soulful, inspired performance of old classics ("My Cherie Amour") and more recent hits ("So What the Fuss"). With piano-top dancing, bongo-drumming and raspy vocals, Mr Wonder, concluding his first tour in ten years, is as good at 57 as ever.

The New York Times will discontinue its TimesSelect service, which charges subscribers for access to columns by the likes of Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd, and open all its web content to readers as of Tuesday night. After two years of TimesSelect, the newspaper has concluded that advertisements, which increase with higher traffic, generate more revenue than subscription fees. Readers will gain access to the archives until 1987, and stories written before 1923.

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Alisher Usmanov

September 21, 2007 - 08:37 — Visitor

Editor's note: I've removed a comment about Alisher Usmanov that was posted here, and in its place I'm substituting an extract from a Guardian story on the same subject — RC

Thursday September 13, 2007
Guardian

Arsenal's newest shareholder, the Uzbek minerals billionaire Alisher Usmanov, continues to police discussion of his past and of his intentions for the Gunners after paying £75m for David Dein's 14.58% share in the club.

Schillings, the lawyers acting for Usmanov, have been in touch with several independent Arsenal supporters' websites and blogs warning them to remove postings referring to allegations made against him by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Usmanov was jailed under the old Soviet regime but says that he was a political prisoner who was then freed and granted a full pardon once Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as president. Schillings have warned the websites that repetition of Murray's allegations were regarded as "false, indefensible and grossly defamatory".

Most sites have complied and removed the allegations. Murray himself is yet to receive any correspondence from Usmanov's lawyers, though the hosts of his website have complied with Schillings' demands. The former ambassador says that he has contacted Schillings to ensure they know
where to send any writ.