Monster Mash: Former Guggenheim director jailed; Washington National Opera’s financial woes; Iraqi theater’s comeback

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-- Busted: The former director of Spain’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has been sentenced to 32 months in jail for stealing about $750,000 from the museum between 1998 and 2008. (Agence France Presse)

-- Trouble looming: Are layoffs and other financial cuts in the works at the Washington National Opera? (Baltimore Sun)

-- Accord: A Berlin museum has reached an agreement with the owner of a medieval relief that was confiscated by the Nazis. (Bloomberg)

-- Returning to normalcy? Theater in Iraq is making a comeback as violence continues to abate. (Reuters, via ABC News)

-- Scholarly debate: A bust of Julius Caesar believed to date to 46 BC is a subject of skepticism among some antiquarians. (New York Times)

-- Wunderkind: A boy artist in the U.K. is selling his landscape paintings for about $27,900. (The Guardian)

-- Sugar plum dance-off: New York’s American Ballet Theatre is ratcheting up the competition with City Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Company in the ‘Nutcracker’ market. (New York Times)

-- Handheld: A new wireless device allows theater patrons to read live captions in eight different languages. (BBC News)

-- Capturing the moment: Why do photographs of stage productions often look so bad? (The Guardian)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Expressing Judaism with a paintbrush; music critic Mark Swed reviews Gustavo Dudamel‘s latest concert.

-- David Ng