In Brief: Like a Lion Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Heather Raffo, the playwright of 9 Parts of Desire, will write a libretto for a new opera by composer Tobin Stokes, to be premiered by City Opera Vancouver in June 2012. The story will be based on the experiences of U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Christian Ellis in the Battle of Falujah in Iraq in 2004. [Straight.com]


• With hat tip to Boing Boing, someone had the brilliant idea to train greyhounds to be "listening dogs," that is, to sit patiently and "listen" non-judgmentally as children learn to read aloud. [The Guardian]


• With hat tip to Tyler Cowen, just what is the "yoga" practiced by so many Americans, and how far back do its traditions go? [Open]


• No one here at Ionarts thought that we would actually be hearing James Levine conduct when the Boston Symphony Orchestra comes to Washington later this month. Sadly, it is much worse than we feared: he will step down from the BSO altogether in September. [New York Times]


• Norman Lebrecht still thinks that Riccardo Chailly may be next in line to replace Levine in Boston: if true, Boston listeners are lucky indeed. [Slipped Disc]


• A friend from South Dakota passes along the news that Andre Larson, the director and founder of the National Music Museum at the University of South Dakota, is retiring. As my friend puts it, there is this amazing collection of musical instruments, now totaling over 15,000 instruments, many of them rare and priceless -- "at the end of the world," in Vermillion, S.Dak. [Argus Leader]