Features
David Nice
It’s a brilliantly sunny January afternoon amidst a general drama of rain at an industrial park outside Aix-en-Provence, and members of a production team are gathering for the first time in the back yard of the festival’s rehearsal studios. Some have met earlier, and three of the five singers who’ll be arriving shortly know each other thanks to the connections already made through the European Network of Opera Academies. But it’s a journey into the unknown with ENOA’s fifth anniversary co-production, which will only reach its proper beginning in tonight’s Aix premiere, and hopefully develop Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Last year’s Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) played out in the shadow of conflict in Ukraine and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and a year on you could be forgiven for wondering if anything’s really changed. International sanctions remain in place – in fact they were renewed for another six months right in the middle of MIFF’s late-June run, and much alluded to by festival president Nikita Mikhalkov throughout proceedings.Funding issues reflecting Russia’s economic recession saw the festival itself shortened by two days, and its main competition programme reduced to a dozen films. Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
No-one could joke about the tragic aspect of Orson Welles’s career, the fact that his inestimable promise had only been partially realised, better than Welles himself. Once, when asked about the outrage following his panic-inducing radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, the director quipped, “I didn’t go to jail. I went to Hollywood.” And that was punishment enough.Welles, the boy wonder turned studio pariah, who nevertheless has more truly great films to his name than most filmmakers, was born 100 years ago: the BFI is marking the centenary with the retrospective Orson Welles: The Great Read more ...
theartsdesk
Of all the art forms, theatre has been most attentive to the story of HIV/AIDS. Leading the way in America there was Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (1985) and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1991). In the UK the most resonant exploration of the virus’s devastating impact was Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg (1994). While all have been revisited - Kramer's play was filmed for HBO last year, when the Donmar Warehouse revived Elyot's masterpiece - as a subject for new drama HIV/AIDS has somewhat dropped off the theatrical radar, which is why a play by Shaun Kitchener is an intriguing Read more ...
David Kettle
It has felt like a strong year for the Edinburgh International Film Festival, even with new artistic director Mark Adams joining part-way through the programming process. And as the event sprinted towards its ever-denser conclusion – 17 "best of the fest" screenings of this year’s most in-demand films joined the already full programme for the event’s final day on Sunday 28 June – it was inevitably time to announce the festival’s award winners.Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl (reviewed by Demetrios Matheou in his earlier round-up) took the best international feature film award, Read more ...
David Kettle
Ebb of Winter felt about right. It’s one of Peter Maxwell Davies’s most recent works, a yearning for the brightness and warmth of spring at the end of an Orcadian winter, written in 2013 for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 40th anniversary. And it was given a welcome re-run (on the summer solstice, no less) as part of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s second concert at the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney, what must surely be Britain’s furthest-flung classical music celebration, founded back in 1977 by Maxwell Davies himself.But winter hadn’t quite ebbed enough: with blankets of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Gruff Rhys has called it the Great Welsh Media Gang-Bang. This year everyone who is anyone (who can get funding) has hopped on a plane for Argentina to follow in the footsteps of the 150 Welsh men, women and children who emigrated to Patagonia 150 years ago – broadcasters, musicians, politicians, journalists, comedians.Meanwhile, back in Wales, the 150th anniversary has occasioned the first ever collaboration between Wales’s two national theatres: National Theatre Wales and its Welsh-language sibling Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. The production is called {150} and it is the brainchild of Marc Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It’s a big deal when a film festival unveils a new artistic director. After all, this is the person who leads the selection of often hundreds of films, thereby shaping the style and tone of the festival. It’s a responsibility that can not only reflect but dictate patterns in filmmaking and viewing; and for specifically public events, such as the festivals in London and Edinburgh, the pleasure of thousands of people depends on getting it right.This is a terrific job to have, which is why there are some festival chiefs around the world, cineaste Sepp Blatters, who refuse to budge for years on Read more ...
David Nice
Earlier this year only black smoke came from the chimney of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s orchestral conclave: a new chief conductor to follow Sir Simon Rattle had not been decided upon. Rumours circulated that it could be many months, even a year, before the choice was made. Then, out of the blue as far as most of us outsiders were concerned, yesterday’s result arrived – and to most music-lovers in the UK, it might well be a “who”? Or rather, an initial exclamation of delight that the man who’s wrought wonders at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko, was the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
What happened to Harry Lime during the war that he slid into iniquity, or was he always a swine? What cracked in him so badly that he sold diluted penicillin that gave children meningitis? What rat-like instincts of survival prompted him to betray his Czech lover so that the Russians would evict her from Austria? And why did he summon the hapless Holly Martins from America to join his racket? Was it that he could rely on Holly to be dazzled and dominated by him, as he must have been 20 years before at school?These and other questions – comprising the mystery within the mystery – are left Read more ...
David Nice
Music-lovers outside Denmark will have come to know Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) through his shatteringly vital symphonies as one of the world-class greats, a figure of light, darkness and every human shade in between. For Danes it is different: since childhood, most have been singing at least a dozen of his simpler songs in community gatherings, probably without even knowing the name of the composer.The forthright, folk-square sentiments and the melodies that seem to have part of the Danish fabric for centuries are a part of the national heritage but haven’t travelled abroad. So the general Read more ...
David Kettle
The Cottier Chamber Project is coming to feel increasingly like Glasgow’s answer to the Proms. If the Proms took place in a former church high on shabby-chic charm, that is. And if they ran for just three weeks. And only covered chamber music.Okay, the comparison might not bear much scrutiny. But from a viewpoint near the beginning of the Cottier festival, with its profusion of events – two, three or more a day – stretching off seemingly into the distant future, plus its all-encompassing ensembles, performers and repertoire (Baroque, contemporary, opera, jazz, folk, even film and dance), it’s Read more ...