Thursday's Art Notes

_Rachelle Durkin and Anish Sanghvi rehearse with "Opera Australia":http://www.opera-australia.org.au/scripts/nc.dll?OPRA:HOMEPAGE for their production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in Sydney, which opened Wednesday. Inspired by Shakespeare and transformed into an Indian-style production by director "Baz Luhrmann":http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0525303/, the opera sees Indian gods, British colonials and rustic clowns collide, collude and sometimes fall in love. Photo by Greg Wood/ AFP/ Getty Images_ * A court in Manhattan heard testimony Thursday at "a hearing over the Google Books settlement dispute":http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOOGLE_BOOK_BATTLE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT. The judge said he would not make a ruling today, because of the "voluminous" amount of submitted statements. * The amorous memoir of archetypal playboy Giacomo Casanova "now belongs to the French National Library":http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123844961. It spent over a century in the possession of a prominent German publishing family and was first published in 1960. * The Getty Museum announced a new effort in its campaign to strengthen ties to Italy "by forging a cultural partnership with the island of Sicily":http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/02/getty-museum-to-embark-on-partnership-with-sicily.html. * The New York Times profiles "the man in charge of designing the exhibition space":http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/arts/design/18neuner.html?ref=arts&pagewanted=all at the Museum of Modern Art.