A Hand for Hannu
How fitting that Hannu Lintu, a graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, should be conducting the Finnish composer’s The Oceanides with the Academy Festival Orchestra at the Granada, part of the Music Academy’s 75th anniversary summer festival celebrations.
Lintu, 54, chief conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, was in extraordinary form for the nearly two-hour concert, which concluded with Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 1 in D Major, ‘Titan’” with the youthful, energized musicians playing with such unbridled frenzied exuberance I thought the cavernous stage would literally be sucked into the theatrical vortex.
A truly magnificent show…
New Series in the Works
Prince Harry and former actress wife, Meghan Markle, have hired Oscar-nominated left-leaning director Liz Garbus to helm their Netflix documentary-series.
The Sussexi, based in Riven Rock, have teamed up with Garbus for the show which they have been working on for more than a year as part of their multimillion-dollar deal with the streaming giant, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.
Garbus was seen in the background with the tony twosome last September during their trip to New York with a small camera crew who hid their equipment in an apparent bid to keep the top-secret project under wraps.
The cameras followed them to a red-carpet gala aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Intrepid in Manhattan, and at a lunch at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.
Garbus has built her career as a documentarian and filmmaker tackling true crime, voter suppression, and the justice system. She also helmed the last season of The Handmaid’s Tale for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 2021.
On the Rise
While Prince Harry, 37, has been raking it in signing multimillion deals with Netflix and Spotify, his father Prince Charles, 73, has also been adding mightily to his coffers through the Duchy of Cornwall, established in 1337 by King Edward III to produce income for his son.
Charles, who is also known as the Duke of Cornwall, as well as Prince of Wales, saw his income rise more than $27 million last year.
The value of the duchy estate, 135,000 acres spread across 23 counties, mainly in the southwest and, most importantly, central London, jumped $111,960,468 on the previous financial year – up just over 15 percent – came as the duchy experienced a post-pandemic “bounce back” thanks to staycations and a record year for trading.
Total assets rose $111,756,063 from $1,115,850,000 in 20-21 to $1,454,988,397 in 21-22. Its net asset value hit a record $1,963,231,191, up from $1,154,087,677.
New Bicoastal Digs
Santa Barbara billionaire Larry Ellison, 77, continues his property buying spree.
The Oracle computer tycoon, one of America’s richest men, has paid $173 million for a Palm Beach, Florida-area estate from another high-tech billionaire, Jim Clark, who co-founded Netscape, who paid $94 million for the former Ziff publishing family estate in March, 2021.
The property first hit the market in 2015 for $200 million. Before Clark bought the compound, it had been facing a possible subdivision.
The 16-acre Manalapan estate is near another Palm Beach property Ellison bought last year for $80 million. Back in 2012 he paid $300 million to acquire 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which now serves as his home base.
His latest acquisition has a 62,000-square-foot, 12-bedroom main house. But additional residences on the sprawling property bring the count to 33 bedrooms and almost 40 baths.
It comes with 2,500 feet of waterfront, with 1,200 feet on the Atlantic and 1,300 feet on Lake Worth.
