London Coliseum
ENO's new 2012/13 season in fullTuesday, 24 April 2012The ENO's 2012/13 season includes premieres from Philip Glass (The Perfect American) and Michel van der Aa (Sunken Garden) and nine new productions from some of today's most iconoclastic stage directors. The Verdi bicentenary begins in the UK... Read more... |
Anna Karenina, Eifman Ballet of St Petersburg, London ColiseumWednesday, 04 April 2012
An apocryphal story tells of an awful theatrical adaptation of the story of Anne Frank. When the Nazis arrive to search the house where the family are in hiding, an enraged theatre-goer shouts, “She’s in the attic!” Well, I didn’t quite point Anna... Read more... |
Apollo/ Jeux/ Suite en blanc, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 29 March 2012
Just a typical night at the ballet. The sun god rises with his goddesses, people play tennis and flirt in a garden, a handsome young chap struts his considerable stuff on a Twenties beach, and an array of white-tutu’d ballerinas perform deliciously... Read more... |
Ballet for £10 - English National Ballet reach outWednesday, 28 March 2012English National Ballet is offering best seats for its current London Coliseum season this week for £10 as it tries to broaden the potential ballet audience from the familiar pleasures of Swan Lake or The Nutcracker to the sophisticated delights and... Read more... |
Firebird/ Rite of Spring, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 23 March 2012
Two amazing things in one evening from a company totally at sixes and sevens artistically - it could only be English National Ballet. First amazing thing: the uncovering of a confident and stylish young choreographer straight from school. Second... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Russian Choreographer Boris EifmanSaturday, 17 March 2012
No choreographer so divides American and British critics as Russia's only international dancemaker, Boris Eifman. He's "an amazing magician of the theatre", according to the late, great US critic Clive Barnes. He "flaunts all the worst clichés of... Read more... |
theASHtray: Klinghoffer, Cape Town, and Debussy pisses off the poetsSaturday, 03 March 2012
Who does the PR these days for Middle Eastern extremists? Whoever it is clearly wasn’t on board when the Palestine Liberation Front decided to whack the Achille Lauro. Or wasn’t aware that chucking a wheelchair-bound pensioner into the Med was the... Read more... |
The Tales of Hoffmann, English National OperaSaturday, 11 February 2012
For all its comic fantasy and lilting tunes, there’s nothing pastel-coloured about Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Deaths are frequent and bloody, humour is macabre, and emotions run high – being late to the pub is cause enough for violence and... Read more... |
Strictly Gershwin, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 06 January 2012
Craig Hassall, English National Ballet’s managing director, apologised ironically at theartsdesk’s Dance Question Time in November for putting on popular work at ENB, meaning Strictly Gershwin, a song-and-dance entertainment to follow the music-and-... Read more... |
2011: Unlovely Love Stories and Unerotic Erotic TalesWednesday, 28 December 2011
While I'm still learning to disentangle my mezzo from my Meistersinger, I enjoyed a lot of the opera on offer in London this year, especially at English National Opera. Parsifal was perfect and Rameau's Castor and Pollux, while probably a little too... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 09 December 2011
I don't want to get the blues at The Nutcracker of all ballets. It should be all snow and Christmas, flowers and presents, firelight, moonlight, candlelight and unearthly brilliance. What with the lush magic of the Birmingham Royal Ballet Nutcracker... Read more... |
Tosca, English National OperaSunday, 27 November 2011
Who is more likely to be an operatic creature of flesh and blood: Puccini's young diva, unexpectedly caught up in the infernal machine of a lustful tyrant, or Tchaikovsky's teenager impetuously pouring out her soul in a love letter to a man she's... Read more... |
