18th century
Katherine Waters
Of the British, the English have a reputation for satire. They’re also prone to stupidity. The combination of biting morality and excoriating wit required to deride this tendency reached notable heights in the work of engraver and painter William Hogarth (1697-1764). It is with bracing timing that curators at Sir John Soane’s Museum have brought together ten pieces of his work in an engrossing exhibition taking place across five rooms in the house of one of his most notable admirers.Soane’s (1753-1857) long-standing interest in Hogarth’s work did much to revive the artist’s reputation. His Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Poor Satan. Adam and Eve are loved-up, snogging on a flowery hillock and all he’s got for company is a snake — an extension of himself no less, and where’s the fun in monologues? Poor, poor Satan. He’s a hunk too, if you don’t mind blue. Coiffed hair and toned arms with a sexy sky slouch. Ever seen such a lovely lounger? Ever seen such a mournful moue? He’s angel worthy of our pity, even if he is fallen. But maybe Adam and Eve’s bliss isn’t all its cracked up to be. Isn’t Adam’s posture a touch douchy? Doesn’t Eve look a bit uncomfortable stretching up to meet his lips? Why are their eyes Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata’s series of in-concert recordings featuring Mozart piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is well under way now, and this programme, like others before it, included a couple of his opera overtures too. Why so? "Because all Mozart piano concertos are also mini-operas," to quote Camerata music director Gábor Takács-Nagy, who likes talking to his audiences about what he and his fellow-musicians are up to.Fair point – at least, it’s almost a truism that Mozart often introduces his themes as if they were full-fledged characters unveiling their personalities, that his Read more ...
David Nice
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted". The same could be said of spectators witnessing this Royal Opera cast for Agrippina going way over the top, and mostly not in the best way: surprising given the rigour with which Barrie Kosky usually directs his singers. Remember - once seen, who could forget it? - Max Reinhardt's visually beautiful film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Blame it on the box set. The four Bach Orchestral Suites fit neatly together as a recording project. They used to fill out the four sides of a double LP back in the early stages of the baroque revival. Completists and collectors could rejoice then, and with many more versions to choose from, they still can now. But are these pieces, which were never intended to be played one after the other, varied enough to make a satisfying and convincing concert? Not really.The first problem is a nagging propensity to hang around in D major. Two of the four suites – so half of the set in the versions Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Serious historians don’t much care for counter-factual speculations. Readers, however, often enjoy them. So here’s mine. In 1780, the seemingly invincible forces of the East India Company had suffered a crushing defeat at Pollilur, west of Madras. It was inflicted by the well-drilled Mysore armies of Haidar Ali and his legendary warrior son, Tipu Sultan. Backed by French arms and expertise, the Mysore forces had allied with the rulers of Bengal and Avadh (roughly, today’s Uttar Pradesh) to resist the merchants-turned-conquerors from London. English power and influence in India, until then Read more ...
graham.rickson
Gounod: Symphonies 1 and 2 Iceland Symphony Orchestra/Yan Pascal Tortelier (Chandos)Roger Nichols’ lucid sleeve note underlines the point that Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique singularly failed to kick off a 19th century French symphonic tradition. Édouard Lalo complained that critics assumed that you only wrote symphonies if you weren't up to the challenge of composing operas. Saint-Saëns’ 3rd is the only French romantic symphony we get to hear nowadays, Franck’s sublime example having slipped through the cracks. Exactly when Gounod's two symphonies were written isn't clear, though it's Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
We’ve all had the experience of wandering into a church, only to discover it filled unexpectedly with music: the choir rehearsing for Evensong, a local orchestra practising, a soprano and organist getting ready for a weekend wedding. This spirit of serendipity, of startling, incongruous beauty, is the essence of the Dordogne’s annual Itinéraire Baroque festival, which invites its audience to stray into the many small churches that cover the region, filling these dark, quiet Romanesque buildings with music and life.And this isn’t just any music. When pioneering harpsichordist and organist Ton Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
Hello sun, hello great whales, hello choral counterpoint. If there is a more life-enhancing work than Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, I’ve yet to hear one. Its sheer joie-de-vivre was a felicitous arrival at the Proms, where it really ought to be a regular fixture. Our Haydn seekers were the BBC Philharmonic under its brand-new principal conductor Omer Meier Wellber (pictured below with soprano Sarah-Jane Brandon) – he assumes his post this month – together with the BBC Proms Youth Choir, which recruits 16- to 25-year-olds from all over the country to sing at the festival. Read more ...
David Nice
Seven European cities, seven works: from an eight-year-old's First Symphony composed in what is now Ebury Street to the towering concert aria for Josepha Dushchek of Prague's Villa Bertramka, Ian Page's latest Mozart cornucopia took us on a rich and at times startling journey, a testament - as Page wrote eloquently yesterday in his article for The Arts Desk - to the abiding need for freedom of movement in a human being's development, regardless of artistic talent or age.If there was a flaw, it came in the inevitable grouping of pretty but hardly ground-breaking numbers in the first half - and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It has become routine to accuse Brexiteers of wanting to bring back the British Empire (though obviously it's OK to run an empire from Brussels), but the charge might more accurately be levelled at ITV. They’ve brought the ratings rolling in with their saga of the early years of Queen Victoria, and Beecham House, set in late-18th century India, is being touted in some quarters as “The New Downton”, itself a relict of Edwardian pomp and ceremony.Though I must admit, Beecham House doesn’t look much like Downton Abbey to me. True, it’s full of spectacular palaces peopled with wealthy potentates Read more ...
David Nice
All happy 18th century couples are alike, it seems, and that makes for a certain placidity in Gluck's pastoral Bauci e Filomene for the (unhappy) wedding of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma and Maria Amalia, Archduchess of Austria. All unhappy couples are unhappy in different ways, especially if the marital misunderstanding takes place when you're bringing your wife back from the land of the dead. Riveting intensity from two young star singers, Ukrainian mezzo Lena Belkina and Australian soprano Kiandra Howarth, drove home what a masterpiece the work we know as Orfeo ed Euridice truly is, even Read more ...