Italy
Blu-ray: Story of a Love AffairSunday, 26 July 2020
The tortuous drama of James M Cain’s 1940’s thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice has inspired many films: the slow-burning mix of erotic desire, temptation, murder and guilt was ideally suited to American film noir, so it’s in some ways... Read more... |
Ennio Morricone 1928-2020: A lost afternoon in his apartment in RomeTuesday, 07 July 2020
Ennio Morricone was a genius, or as close to that description as makes no odds. If we mean someone who created a unique body of work, one that changed culture, had a distincive style and was massively influential, then Morricone fitted the bill.... Read more... |
Classical music/Opera direct to home 16 - putting freelancers firstFriday, 19 June 2020
The latest wave of musicians to make their voices heard comes from the freelancers who haven't been able to claim anything so far for their loss of income and of the ability to work together. As a group of top players putting out their plea observes... Read more... |
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... |
