Italy
Shutdown: The Virus That Changed Our World, Sky Documentaries review - a chaotic response and an uncertain futureWednesday, 03 June 2020
It’s too early for a definitive account of the Covid-19 pandemic, and this was very much a Sky News version of what we’ve been through so far. Although it seems the virus has peaked and we’re entering a tentative stage of partial de-lockdown, the... Read more... |
Nathalie Léger: The White Dress review – masterfully introvertedSunday, 22 March 2020
Nathalie Léger’s The White Dress brings personal and public tragedy together in a narrative as absorbingly melancholic as its subject is shocking. The story described by Léger’s narrator – a scarcely fictional version of herself – is of the... Read more... |
The Revenger's Tragedy, Piccolo Teatro di Milano/Cheek by Jowl, Barbican review - fun, but not enoughThursday, 05 March 2020
Vendetta, morte: what a lark to find those tools of 19th century Italian opera taken back to their mother tongue in a Milanese take on Jacobean so-called tragedy, where the overriding obsession is on mortalità. It would take a composer of savage wit... Read more... |
Blu-ray: 8 ½Tuesday, 18 February 2020
8 ½ is one of the classic films about the art of cinema. There is something about the make-believe of movies, and our buying into the dreams they foster, which suggests reflection and self-referencing, as if films offered a mirror to our inner lives... Read more... |
Les vêpres siciliennes, Welsh National Opera review - spectacular, silly, but some great musicSunday, 09 February 2020
It’s not hard to see why The Sicilian Vespers has struggled since its surprisingly successful opening run at the Paris Opéra in 1855. Verdi had composed it reluctantly, despised the librettist, Eugène Scribe, who he regarded as a well-named cynical... Read more... |
Beatrice Rana, Wigmore Hall review - fantasy and sonority writ largeSaturday, 08 February 2020
Not even the unengaged or terminally weary could have dozed through this. Pianists have often commented how the Wigmore Steinway is too big for the hall, and most adjust accordingly. Not 27-year-old Italian Beatrice Rana, but not in the bad way of... Read more... |
Shock of the Nude with Mary Beard, BBC Two review - when does art become erotica?Tuesday, 04 February 2020
Are you a fan of oysters or Marmite? Mary Beard is not to everybody’s taste, but love her or loathe her she is not only a distinguished academic but a ubiquitous writer and presenter of classical histories, connected travels, and ruminations on... Read more... |
Blu-ray: A Fistful of DynamiteSunday, 15 December 2019
A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time in America are Sergio Leone’s films with the most explicit political underpinning. Indeed, given recent events, A Fistful of Dynamite is a thoroughly pertinent film, asking how we might achieve social... Read more... |
Caroline Moorehead: A House in the Mountains review – the women's war against FascismSunday, 10 November 2019
In September 1944, a heavily pregnant Resistance activist in the north of German-occupied Italy was arrested on a visit to Milan. Lisetta Giua, a law student and fiancée of the Jewish anti-Fascist chief Vittorio Foa, worked as one of hundreds of... Read more... |
Botticelli in the Fire, Hampstead Theatre review - history mash-up burns brightSaturday, 26 October 2019
Botticelli is a household name, but who knows the true story behind his most famous painting? The painter's 1480s masterpiece, The Birth of Venus, is one of the most striking images of Renaissance Florence – and has achieved iconic status. Because... Read more... |
Hisham Matar: A Month in Siena review – memories, framedSunday, 20 October 2019
A Month in Siena is a sweet, short mediation on art, grief, and life. Ostensibly describing the time and space of its title, Matar touches on vanishings and lacunae in his past. Early on, he links the disappearance of his father in Cairo in 1990 to... Read more... |
Verdi Requiem, LPO, Gardner, RFH review – beyond the big noiseMonday, 14 October 2019
You seldom expect to feel the breath of apocalypse and the terror of the grave amid the modestly rationalist architecture and passion-killer acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall. In fact, before Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra... Read more... |
