Italy
Aci by the River, London Handel Festival, Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse review - myths for the #MeToo ageThursday, 11 April 2024
“Site-specific” performance locations rarely come more atmospheric, or evocative, than this one. Beyond the East India Dock basin, with the hedgehog-backed dome of the O2 looming just across the Thames on a gusty spring evening, a cavernous “chain... Read more... |
Ripley, Netflix review - Highsmith's horribly fascinating sociopath adrift in a sea of noirSaturday, 06 April 2024
There would have to be a good reason for making another screen version of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley, already successfully adapted by Anthony Minghella in his 1999 film. One this new adaptation presumably had in mind... Read more... |
Io Capitano review - gripping odyssey from Senegal to ItalyFriday, 05 April 2024
Io Capitano works on several levels. At first glance, it’s a ripping yarn – two optimistic Senegalese teenagers embark on a dangerous journey, across the Sahara, through the hell of Libya and on to an overcrowded boat across the Mediterranean... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Padre PioTuesday, 26 March 2024
Faith and damnation frequently collide in Abel Ferrara’s films, drawing fiery performances from often starry casts. The New York master who made The Driller Killer and Bad Lieutenant now lives in Rome and, like his Pasolini, Padre Pio is a political... Read more... |
Immaculate review - grisly convent horror is timely but flawedSaturday, 23 March 2024
Immaculate marks Sydney Sweeney’s complete takeover of the big screen. This year alone she has brought back the rom-com with Anyone But You, showed off her acting chops in whistle-blower drama Reality, and joined the Marvel universe with Madame Web... Read more... |
La Strada, Sadler's Wells review - a long and bumpy roadThursday, 01 February 2024
Federico Fellini’s 1954 classic La Strada ought to be a gift to a choreographer. The film has pathos, good and evil, a bewitchingly gamine heroine, and incidental music by the great Nino Rota, a composer who can find melancholy in the music of... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Frightened WomanTuesday, 30 January 2024
Piero Schivazappa’s 1969 debut The Frightened Woman toys with living up to its title, suggesting a sadistic test of endurance. Its Italian title, Femina Ridens, though, translates as The Laughing Woman, and this is really an ironically extreme... Read more... |
Ferrari review - a steady, slow-lane biopicWednesday, 27 December 2023
Just as Napoleon may be Ridley Scott’s most autobiographical subject, so motor-racing potentate Enzo Ferrari’s mastery of streamlined speed seems made for Michael Mann. But where his best films’ cool control accelerates into calibrated mayhem,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Ravenna - Riccardo Muti passes on a lifetime's operatic wisdomTuesday, 26 December 2023
Does “the practice of opera singing in Italy” need help from UNESCO, which has newly inscribed it on the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”? Italian opera is surely immensely popular worldwide. But when it comes to... Read more... |
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed take on the Divine Comedy returnsMonday, 27 November 2023
Singular in its variousness, this is a three-act ballet that need some unpicking. No wonder those hooked on first acquaintance in 2021, like theartsdesk’s dance critic Jenny Gilbert, have been back to see it more than once.So long as you accept that... Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Italianate vitality, if not much finesseMonday, 23 October 2023
Eighteenth century Sweden is the nominal setting for A Masked Ball, but its essence is a unique mixture of Italian testosterone and French opéra-comique elegance. If this concert performance brought it closer to the indiscriminate vitality of early... Read more... |
Album: Melanie De Biasio - Il ViaggioWednesday, 11 October 2023
Il Viaggio is a form of soundtrack. Its lyrics, music and soundscapes are created in response to the journey referenced in the title. Though born and raised in Belgium, Melanie De Biasio’s paternal grandfather was Italian. After the Europalia arts... Read more... |
