Gossip columnist 1930s through the 1950s, the two best-known - and competing - Hollywood gossip columnists were Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Well-timed leaks about a star's purported romantic adventures helped the studios to create and sustain the public's interest in the studios' star actors. As well, the movie studios' publicity agents acted as unnamed "well-informed inside sources" who provided misinformation and rumors to counteract whispers about celebrity secrets — such as homosexuality or an out-of-wedlock child — that could have severely damaged not only the reputation of the movie star in question, but the movie star's box office viability. Having fallen
Andreas Mitisek also sought after as a guest conductor in North America, leading productions for the Seattle Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Vancouver Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Hawaii Opera Theater, Opera Theatre of St. Louis among others. He staged the East Coast premiere composer Stewart Wallace's and librettist Michael Korie's “Hopper’s Wife” for the New York City Opera This surreal erotically-charged 90-minute 1997 chamber opera fantasy about an imagined marriage between the painter Edward Hopper and the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper premiered at Harlem Stage April 28 with performances through May 1, 2016. Andreas Mitisek Andreas Mitisek is the Artistic and General