Features
Iestyn Davies
Tomorrow Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream will begin a short run at the Snape Maltings, Suffolk in a new production directed by Netia Jones and conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth. It will mark the high point of the Aldeburgh Festival’s summer celebrations half a century on from the opening of the Snape Maltings concert hall. It is therefore more than a happy coincidence that back in 1967 the "Dream" was aired as part of the hall’s maiden season.I shall be performing the countertenor role of Oberon. Alongside me will be soprano Sophie Bevan as Tytania, bass Matthew Rose as Bottom, a Read more ...
theartsdesk
The first of Jiří Bělohlávek’s final three appearances in London, conducting his Czech Philharmonic in a concert performance of Janáček’s Jenůfa, came as a shock. The trademark grey curly hair had vanished. Clearly he had undergone chemotherapy, but we all presumed – since no-one pries in these instances – that what had to be cancer was in remission. By the time of his Dvořák Requiem at the Barbican in April, the assumption was that he would carry on for an indefinite period of time. So his death at the untimely age of 71 last Wednesday came as a surprise even to those who knew him better Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Just as the 200th anniversary is about to be celebrated of the great genius of 19th-century classical ballets, Marius Petipa, the creator of The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, La Bayadère, half of Swan Lake, and many other masterpieces, his oeuvre's most remarkable reconstructor has died suddenly, aged only 55. Sergei Vikharev was the passionate pioneer of a brave new movement to install period sensibilities in an artform that had long become the plaything of its performers and coaches rather than its creators, and his death is devastating timing for ballet as well as for his family and Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
If one were to stop at the title, My Life as a Courgette – from the French Ma vie de Courgette and unsurprisingly renamed for those insular Americans as My Life As a Zucchini – could be too easily dismissed as a juvenile or childlike frivolity. And that would be to under-estimate this French-Swiss, Oscar-nominated, stop-motion animation, which is one of the more profound, touching and daring family films of recent years.Based on the French novel Autobiography of a Courgette by Gilles Paris, it follows the fortunes of a nine-year-old boy, Icare, nicknamed Courgette by his alcoholic mother, Read more ...
David Nice
"Love is in the air," croons or rather bellows presenter Juri Tetzlaff, getting his audience of adults and children to bellow back the wordless refrain, arms swaying above their heads. Mezzo Sophie Rennert, dragged up as noble Lotario, and soprano Marie Lys as widowed princess Adelaide dance tenderly to the strains. They're not singing one of the most ravishing love duets in opera this morning because this is the one-hour family version of Handel's Lotario. And a better advertisement to the parents for the whole thing I can't imagine. The show proper is the best I've seen out of four of Read more ...
Sue Bourne
Do you ever wonder what you’d do if you were given a terminal diagnosis and told you may only have months to live? That question is what my latest film is all about. It may sound maudlin and sad but I can assure you it isn’t. And the reason for that is that the people I set out to find may have been terminally ill but they’d all chosen to make the most of the time they have left. The film is honest, uplifting, thought-provoking and, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, it’s also pretty remarkable.It’s not like other films I‘ve seen about death and dying because in essence it’s a film about Read more ...
David Nice
It's funny how Parisians grumble about any major new venue which lies outside their chic central stamping ground. First they moan about having to trundle out to the Philharmonie concert hall in the Cité de la Musique, and now they look as if they'll need some persuading to support major music-making in Les Hauts-de-Seine, an administrative département which generously supports its culture. In fact the Seine Musicale on the Île Seguin, part of a projected cultural hub which was the brainchild of Jean Nouvel, is only an efficient 20 minutes' metro journey from just about anywhere in the centre Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in Covent Garden. There are plenty of private members club in central London, but The Hospital Club is uniquely a creative hub with its own television studio, gallery and performance space, which for certain events are open to non-members.The Hospital Club, which takes its name from the hospital built on the same site in Endell Street in 1749, puts considerable effort into supporting the arts and media. The most tangible evidence of this is its own annual awards for innovative achievements in the creative Read more ...
Stephen Unwin
“I’ve got a terrible confession to make”, I said to my long-suffering partner who had been away for the weekend with our young daughter. “Oh yes,” I could see her thinking, “what have you done now?” “Well, I’ve written a play about the Nazi persecution of the disabled,” was my shifty reply. The truth is it’s such a disgusting subject, I was almost ashamed of what I’d done.All Our Children has its roots in historical fact. I’d been reading Richard Evans’s remarkable three-part history of the Third Reich and was fascinated and moved by his account of the deeply conservative and aristocratic Read more ...
David Nice
Many other top Estonian musicians, performing among other works 30 premieres of music by their compatriots in just over a week, might have been equally deserving candidates for the lead image. But perhaps an even more appropriate image might have been a black rectangle. For the life-changing event of the 38th Estonian Music Days, in my experience, was the nearly two-hour darkness behind a blindfold - the experimental heart of this year's festival theme, "Through the Dimness" ("Dusk" might be a more effective translation).For "Obscure Avenues" curated by Taavi Kerikmäe, 40 or so of us were put Read more ...
peter.quinn
Hosted by Jazz FM presenter, Jez Nelson, an impressively varied mix of UK and international artists from the worlds of jazz, blues and soul were honoured at the fourth Jazz FM Awards on Tuesday night. Taking place in the stunning surroundings of the Assembly Hall – a grand, high-ceilinged room located on the first floor of Shoreditch Town Hall (a Grade II listed building) – the evening kicked off with a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. Laura Mvula, having just received the Soul Artist of the Year Award, performed “The Man I Love” from Fitzgerald’s peerless Gershwin Songbook.The tribute was Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Decade Zero is a new commission from acclaimed contemporary classical composer Dave Maric, receiving its world premiere this weekend at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Maric has taken his inspiration from the work of stellar jazz trio Phronesis - bassist Jasper Høiby, drummer Anton Eger and pianist Ivo Neame - which he infuses throughout the new piece with both direct and indirect reference, so that Phronesis’ music is woven into an original score. With Phronesis best known for their lightning rhythmic shifts and jazz exploring the loops and textures of minimalism, and Maric for his brilliance Read more ...