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Two WomenTuesday, 13 September 2016
Ralph Fiennes has long felt at home in the Russian repertoire, whether onstage in Fathers and Sons near the start of his career or, in 1997, taking the Almeida's Ivanov to Moscow as the first UK company to bring Chekhov home, as it were.Add in... Read more... |
Prom 20: Roméo et Juliette, Monteverdi Choir, NYCoS, ORR, GardinerSunday, 31 July 2016
Like Prokofiev in his full-length ballet a century later, Berlioz seems to have been inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to bring forth his most compendious score. John Eliot Gardiner, who knows and loves every bar of light and shade in this... Read more... |
CD: Mark Barrott - Sketches from an Island 2Wednesday, 22 June 2016
The EU referendum isn’t the only thing causing polarised opinion over European issues. The question of what constitutes Balearic Beat looms large over the music community. For some, it’s a fixed point, namely celebrated DJ Alfredo’s record box in... Read more... |
Tristan and Isolde, English National OperaFriday, 10 June 2016
"Bad Star Trek episodes" is how one director describes a certain unfortunate look in would-be intergalactic opera productions. The late Nikolaus Lehnhoff came perilously close to it in his Glyndebourne Tristan und Isolde but offered a coherent... Read more... |
Tannhäuser, Longborough Festival OperaFriday, 10 June 2016
Wagner was never satisfied with Tannhäuser, and it’s not hard to see why. Essentially a study of the tension between sensual and spiritual love, it was composed at a time when, by his own later confession, he lacked the resources to deal properly (... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Royal OperaSunday, 20 December 2015
Searing emotional truth has to be at the core of any attempt to stage Tchaikovsky’s “lyrical scenes after Pushkin”. I was among the minority who thought Kasper Holten got it right, with deep knowledge of the original verse-novel, in his first... Read more... |
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Donmar WarehouseFriday, 18 December 2015
The last time I saw Janet McTeer, she was doing her best with the slightly underwritten role of sister to Glenn Close’s lethal Patty Hewes in Damages, the ultimate TV series about the discrepancy between seeming and being. Which is the theme, too,... Read more... |
CarolThursday, 26 November 2015
New York, in the early 1950s. Twenty-something Therese Belivet is working in a Manhattan department store at Christmas, wearing a Santa hat and dutifully trying to overcome her boredom. Then Carol Aird strides into view – classy, confident,... Read more... |
The Two Pigeons, Royal BalletFriday, 20 November 2015
With real live birds fluttering across the stage, and a sweetly happy ending – hurrah for young love! – Frederick Ashton's 1961 The Two Pigeons can look like mere frothy fantasy, precisely the kind of trivial, uncomplicated... Read more... |
DVD: Love Is AllTuesday, 27 October 2015
Kim Longinotto’s Love Is All stitches together short extracts from 75 different films, aiming to highlight changing British attitudes to love, sex and romance. It opens with a one-minute 1899 short which looks forward to the closing shot of... Read more... |
Lady Anna: All At Sea, Park TheatreSaturday, 22 August 2015
If you were expecting a fusty, formal adaptation of Anthony Trollope – and one of his least known novels, to boot – Lady Anna: All At Sea will come as a breath of fresh air. Colin Blumenau’s production of Craig Baxter’s play, based loosely around... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington OperaFriday, 17 July 2015
We’re so used these days to theatre music as aural torture – blasts of pop music on the tannoy, assorted electronics or, if you’re (moderately) lucky, a snatch of too-loud Chopin or Grieg before the lights come up on the Ibsen drawing-room – that it... Read more... |
