December 7, 2004

Arts, Briefly

tern's Children Challenge Estate

The three adult children of the great violinist (and Carnegie Hall savior) Isaac Stern, left, have challenged the final accounting of his estate in a lawsuit in the probate court in New Milford, Conn. The children, Michael Stern, the music director of the Kansas City Symphony; David, also a conductor, and Shira, a rabbi, are challenging the accounting filed by William Moorhead III, the first executor of the estate of Stern, who died in 2001. Steven E. Ayres, who was appointed by the court to succeed Mr. Moorhead as administrator of the estate after he resigned, said, "The question before the judge is: Is the final accounting true and complete?" He said the judge, Martin Landgrebe, is to hear a petition for lawyers' fees on Dec. 17. As first reported by Newsweek, the Stern children also objected to the fees that Mr. Moorhead paid himself. "This is not about who gets what," Michael Stern said yesterday. "This is about an executor greatly profiting from an estate that he claimed was insolvent and needlessly squandering our family's legacy." Mr. Moorhead did not respond to calls yesterday. LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

Lennon Songs for New Musical

"Lennon," the new musical about John Lennon's life that is to open next August, will have two unpublished songs that Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, has just given to Don Scardino, the writer and director of the production. The songs, "India, India" and "I Don't Want to Lose You," exist only on private recordings that Lennon, right, made in his last years. "I Don't Want to Lose You," a slow, introspective ballad, was one of three songs Ms. Ono gave to the surviving Beatles when they reunited in the early 1990's to complete a few Lennon songs for "The Beatles Anthology." An electronic hum in the song had made it unusable. "India, India" is a sweetly melodic reminiscence of both the Beatles' 1968 visit to India and the beginning of his romance with Ms. Ono. "They're very appropriate for the periods they are showing," Ms. Ono said yesterday. "People would say to me, what are you going to do about all of John's unreleased songs? And I've always said, I will put them out, but I have to find ways to present them in the right way. For these songs, I thought the musical would be a very effective, beautiful way to do it." Lennon was shot to death on Dec. 8, 1980, 24 years ago tomorrow. ALLAN KOZINN

German Museum Returns

Sixty-one years to the day after it was destroyed by a bombing in World War II, one of Germany's largest and oldest museum collections has reopened, above, in a new $100 million building. The Museum for Fine Arts in Leipzig, founded in 1837 by a society of wealthy middle-class citizens and destoyed by Allied bombing on Dec. 4, 1943, opened the doors of its new glass-and-steel, cube-shaped building on Saturday. The museum, in the formerly Communist East, has a collection of some 3,500 paintings, including works by the Romantic-era artist Caspar David Friedrich and the contemporary painter Neo Rauch. The collection had moved from place to place in the years since the bombing, and was largely cut off from the international art world during the Communist era. KIRSTEN GRIESHABER

TV: Voight Over Dylan

A three-hour original movie, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," based on Mitch Albom's best-selling novel, decisively won Sunday's Nielsen overnight ratings competition for ABC. An audience of 19.34 million watched the sentimental Jon Voight movie, which was also No. 1 among 18-to-49 year-olds. Though CBS ranked second in total viewers, with a "60 Minutes" interview with Bob Dylan, above, anchoring its programming, the network came in fourth among the sought-after 18-to-49 demographic. In that age group Fox's lineup took second place. "The Simpsons," in its 16th season, continues to be Fox's strongest Sunday performer, drawing 10.31 million. The Emmy-winning comedy "Arrested Development," which follows "The Simpsons," lost 3.5 million of those viewers, but continues to perform better than it did last season. KATE AURTHUR

A Gift From the Boss

The chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Stephen A. Schwarzman, has given $10 million of his own money to the center, the largest single gift it has received all year, the center announced. The donation is to be used for theater programs, which the center called Mr. Schwarzman's main area of interest, but may also be used for various capital projects. The Kennedy Center is in the midst of a $650 million campaign to construct two new buildings and a sweeping pedestrian plaza that will link it to surrounding monuments. Mr. Schwarzman, who is the president and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, a global investment and advisory concern in New York, is on the board of the New York City Ballet, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the New York Public Library, in addition to his work in Washington. He became the center's chairman in May. JOHN FILES

Opera Star Attacked

The Italian tenor Giuseppe di Stefano underwent surgery in a Kenyan hospital for severe head injuries suffered when a gang of thugs attacked him and his wife outside their villa in the coastal city of Diani last week. According to the Italian news agency ANSA , Mr. di Stefano's most serious injuries resulted from a bad fall he took when the unknown attackers ripped from his neck a gold chain given to him by his longtime duet partner, Maria Callas. Mr. di Stefano, 83, one of the most acclaimed Italian opera singers of the 1950's and 60's, was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, and since then neurosurgeons have operated on him more than once, said Irene Daluma, a nurse on duty Monday night. She described the last of these as a success, but said that Mr. di Stefano would remain in the hospital's intensive care unit. The Italian press has said that robbers ambushed Mr. di Stefano and his wife as the couple left their villa near the picturesque Mombasa coast. JASON HOROWITZ

Footnotes

Stevie Wonder, below, will release his first new studio album in a decade next April, Billboard reported in an interview with the Motown star. The album, "A Time 2 Love," will be on the Motown label - now a subsidiary of Universal Music - and will be his first since "Conversation Peace" in 1995, which has sold 360,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In the Billboard interview, Mr. Wonder said that after "A Time 2 Love," he plans to do a "jazz album with harmonica," a gospel album and a musical.