19th century
David Nice
You can't have too much Dvořák in a single evening, at least not when the works in question operate at the highest level of volatility and melodic abundance like last night's overture, concerto and symphony. "Febrile centrists" might look like an oxymoron, but that just about sums up conductor Paavo Järvi and cellist Gautier Capuçon: superlative techniques, feet firmly planted only so that the music can fly, moving dexterously through the turbulence but never pushing too hard. With the Philharmonia burning for both, this was an incandescent event.Rarely did we encounter the Dvořák of sunlit Read more ...
Richard Farnes
Commentators have, over the years, variously described Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) as all things to all people: Verdi’s Tristan und Isolde, Verdi’s masterpiece, Verdi’s Don Giovanni, a pure love poem, and much more. It seems to me to be one of his most consistently exciting works, perfectly proportioned and dramatically astute.Interestingly, in this instance Verdi did not feel the need to make the extensive revisions that he undertook to the operas either side of it in his canon – Simon Boccanegra, La forza del destino and Don Carlos. Its creation was relatively swift, and its Read more ...
David Nice
Vladmir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra have been to the bottom of the Rhine before, but in 2015 only did a whistlestop tour of the rest of Rheingold's terrain with an extensive array of excerpts. Having worked with the players on Tristan und Isolde and DIe Meistersinger at Glyndebourne, their ever-thorough and brilliant music director decided that the time has come to tackle the most daunting of Wagner's music-dramas, one opera a year up to 2021 when the river will finally burst its banks and the fortress of the gods goes up in flames.Water and fire already play an impressive Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The run of Giselle that opened at the Royal Opera House last night was completely sold out before it even started, and no wonder. Pair Sir Peter Wright's eerie production with some very fine casts and the reliable classiness of the Royal Ballet's corps de ballet and you have an enchanting package indeed.Last night's Giselle was Marinela Nuñez, impeccable in every respect, but particularly charming as the merry, hopeful peasant girl of the first scenes (pictured below), and the loving spirit of the second act (the mad scene does not come quite so easily to this naturally sunny ballerina). The Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Say what you like about Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s partnership with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – and plenty has already been written – but sometimes the facts speak for themselves. At the end of this midweek matinee concert, an audience that had presumably been lured by the promise of Haydn and Max Bruch exploded in laughter and cheers at the end of a piece by György Ligeti.True, it was an unadvertised encore: the final movement of his Concert românesc (1951). But as Ligeti’s Transylvanian hoe-down hurtled onwards, with leader Vesselin Gellev’s solo violin spiralling ever more Read more ...
Owen Richards
A Woman’s Life first premiered at the 2016 Venice International Film Festival, alongside the likes of La La Land, Arrival and Jackie. Though it’s taken longer to get to our shores than its contemporaries, the film feels fresh and relevant. This immensely personal character study is at times dense, but subtly effective.Jeanne is the pleasant and idealistic daughter of Baron Perthuis de Vauds. She lives with her father and mother at a serene chateau in 19th century Normandy, passing the days gardening, drawing and playing games. She is introduced to the newly arrived Viscount Julien, and love Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The last time we saw Christian Bale in a western, he was playing the downtrodden rancher Dan Evans in James Mangold’s punchy remake of 3.10 to Yuma. No doubt it was valuable experience for his role in Hostiles, Scott Cooper’s smouldering flashback to the last days of the Frontier, where Bale plays veteran US Cavalry captain Joseph Blocker.Bale also has previous with Cooper, having starred in his blue collar drama Out of the Furnace, where (as in Yuma) the actor played a fundamentally decent man being ground down by a pitiless fate. In Hostiles, his character isn’t quite so clear-cut. We learn Read more ...
David Nice
Power and intelligence combined make Sarajevo-born British pianist Ivana Gavrić stand out from the crowd. Bass lines are clear and strong; right-hand melodies move in keenly articulated song. The first half of her recital progressed with well-earthed, dancing energy to a strong clincher in Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo. What a pity, then, that the transcendence we hoped for didn't emerge in Schumann's Kreisleriana.It may well be that Schumann's eight pieces, strongly connected here, reveal both the troubled, manic side of the composer's personality and a poised inwardness. But they do, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
One of the much-hyped jewels in the crown of the family-friendly BBC holiday season is this new three-episode adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's much loved novel by Heidi Thomas, the writer of Call the Midwife. We started in the New England winter – a simulacrum of Concord, Massachusetts, where Alcott lived with her three sisters, in circumstances of genteel poverty that she lightly fictionalised in her best-selling novel.An American classic since its publication, and never out of print, Little Women has already made it into half a dozen films, several television adaptations, a piece of Read more ...
David Nice
Remastered they may be, but the 20 live operas recorded here between 1949 and 1964 vary soundwise from clean at best to atrocious, with all the caprices of stage noise and audience participation seemingly acceptable at the time (so often there's the shouting prompter who seems duty bound to cue everything – even interjecting a loud libiamo! in the silence before the voices kick in for La traviata's Brindisi). But you don't have to be a diehard Callas fanatic to realise the value of this extraordinary treasury. On stage she always gave that little bit extra, complete with sobs in the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The real-life PT Barnum was a mixture of impresario, hustler and exploiter, and Elvis Presley’s huckstering manager Colonel Tom Parker would surely have viewed him approvingly. However, he also was also a temperance campaigner and a reforming politician who battled against slavery and supported health and educational projects.A pity, then, that the Barnum who emerges – or perhaps fails to emerge – from Michael Gracey’s lavish musical production shows us few of these complex character traits. Played with frantic energy and dentifrice-exhibiting bonhomie by Hugh Jackman, this Barnum is a feel- Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Jenny Uglow’s biography of Edward Lear (1812-1888) is a meander, almost day by day, through the long and immensely energetic life of a polymath artist. She builds her narrative on an enormous plethora of primary sources – his marvellous illustrated letters, his limericks and poetry, his hundreds of paintings, prodigious sketches and watercolours, his travel narratives, and the reminiscences, letters and narratives of his contemporaries.These Victorians, tireless travellers, left behind such copious piles of paper that they can practically write their own biographies (at least in terms of Read more ...