19th century
David Nice
In the Wigmore's Lieder prayer meetings, baritone Christian Gerhaher is the high priest. There are good reasons for this, but given that the innermost circle of Wigmore Friends pack out his concerts, you do feel that the slightest criticism might merit lynching by the ecstatic communicants. His Schubert is never less than fascinating, but 2011's Winterreise kept its distance, while last night there were more question marks hovering over a Schubertiade of mostly semi-precious stones and only the odd jewel.Where is the unbroken line most of us first heard in his Wolfram at the Royal Opera Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
A good half of the portraits in Russia and the Arts are of figures without whom any conception of 19th century European culture would be incomplete. A felicitous subtitle, “The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky”, provides a natural, even easy point of orientation for those approaching Russian culture, and with it the country’s history and character, without particular advance knowledge.Much is new here, not least the artists themselves, none of whose names are anywhere near as well-known as their subjects. The wider intellectual world they inhabited may seem remote, with its conflicts between Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As the camera lingered lovingly over landscaped gardens and ravishing English countryside with a stately home parked squarely in the back of the frame, one could hardly avoid slipping into a Downtonesque reverie. Even more so when the assembled posh personages arrayed prettily on the greensward began to discuss marriage and inheritance, triggering echoes of the fabled Downton "entail".Clearly, screenwriter Julian Fellowes is not minded to relinquish his grip on ITV's plum 9pm Sunday slot, and his motto may be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it any more than you have to". If he couldn't bring us Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
One of the secrets to enjoying life is mastering the creative use of disappointment. Many in the Covent Garden audience last night were no doubt deeply disappointed not to be seeing Natalia Osipova's legendary portrayal of the title role in Giselle, injury having removed the Russian superstar from the opening night cast. If Royal Ballet regulars they might have been even more disappointed to realise they would therefore be seeing two of the company's more underpowered actors, Sarah Lamb and Matthew Golding, headlining this most dramatic of ballets.All credit to Lamb and Golding; considering Read more ...
David Nice
In the light of what follows, it's probably best to be clear that I'm completely behind the artistic side of ENO in rejecting a 25 per cent reduction of the chorus's annual salary, tied to a shorter season. A full-time chorus of this size is the heart of a big company – without it, no Mastersingers, no Grimes, no Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A creative alternative solution must be found. Musically matters stand stronger than ever, with the new regime's most recent hit being a transformation of what was originally a lame-duck Magic Flute. Production wise, this Norma Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Art exhibitions hardly seem comparable with battery farming, and yet just as our insatiable appetite for cheap meat gives rise to some troubling consequences, so too does the demand for definitive exhibitions that require vulnerable works of art to be shipped around the world. And so it really is a cause for celebration that an exhibition exploring Eugène Delacroix’s influence in the 50 years following his death maintains its focus, argues its case and thoroughly immerses us in his work, without actually showing us any of his best known paintings.We are left to guess at the sheer scale of The Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Christopher Wheeldon's new ballet Strapless scores a first on a number of counts. It’s the first co-production between the Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi (London gets first dibs – Moscow doesn’t get the goods for another 12 months). It forms part of the first ever triple bill the Royal Ballet has devoted to its most famous son. It’s the first ballet music Mark-Anthony Turnage has written to order. And it’s the first ballet on the Covent Garden main stage to feature a passionate gay male kiss.But that’s incidental. The thrust of the Strapless narrative – based on a book of the same title by the Read more ...
David Nice
What fun it must have been to attend any of the St Petersburg Free Music School concerts during the second half of the 19th century. Balakirev, idiosyncratic mentor of the group briefly together as the "Mighty Handful", and his acolytes – Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and the one we usually don't mention, César Cui – would have had orchestral works and sometimes the odd aria from an opera-in-progress on the programme, often alongside music by their western idols Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann. If something wasn't ready, which was often the case, colleagues would help out or offer a Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Lolita Chakrabarti’s impassioned debut has only gained topicality since its 2012 Tricycle incarnation. Trevor Nunn’s all-white Wars of the Roses and #OscarsSoWhite, among others, have fanned its flames, while quips about a paranoid Russian regime and the limits of English openness to change seem all too pertinent. Cameron might well borrow the woolly idea of “new based on the old” during the European referendum debate.Brooking no compromise is rule-breaking African-American actor Ira Aldridge (Adrian Lester), who, in 1833, succeeded the celebrated Edmund Kean as Othello at the Theatre Royal Read more ...
David Nice
Why have all attempts to make French comic opera funny to British audiences fallen so flat, at least since ENO's 1980s Orpheus in the Underworld? That company's La belle Hélène simply curled the toes, while Opera North managed to make a pig's-ear "special edition" of Chabrier's Le roi malgré lui. L'Étoile in its first staging at the Royal Opera fares better, not least because it's mostly performed in impeccable French, but does it ever reach the potentially hilarious pitch of Gilbert and Sullivan?The case for Chabrier's Star twinkling again is made by his first (1877) steps in a very Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The Revenant's production designer Jack Fisk wasn’t required to build multiple sets for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 1823 wilderness epic. Indelible, however, are the few man-made settlements and structures with which Fisk marked the route of the bloodied, abandoned Hugh Glass (Leonard DiCaprio) as he struggles 200 miles southwards on his revenge mission through present-day Montana into South Dakota.They include Glass and his fellow beaver-trappers’ rudimentary camp among towering trees that afford Arikara Indians eyries from which to shoot at them; a Pawnee village following a massacre Read more ...
David Nice
It was another Davis, the late Colin rather than the very alive Andrew, who used to be master of Berlioz's phenomenally inventive opera for orchestra with its novel explanatory prologue and epilogue. I like to think he'd have been looking down fascinated by last night's very different miracle of pace, clarity and ideal blend of instrumental and vocal song.Shakespeare might have approved of what he'd inspired, too, though like rather a lot due to happen in the 400th anniversary year, hardly any of his words are to be found here; this is Berlioz's "What I feel about Romeo and Juliet". Once past Read more ...