Rome
Blu-ray: La Dolce VitaSunday, 17 October 2021
One of those films weighed down by a considerable reputation, La Dolce Vita (1960) is rarely taken as seriously as it should be. From the very first sequence in which a figure of Christ sails across Rome’s skies, suspended from a helicopter, a... Read more... |
Hallenberg, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Gardiner, BBC Proms review - a vindication of voicesThursday, 02 September 2021
Choral singers have suffered more than most from erratic and irrational Covid prohibitions while riskier mass pursuits have gone ahead. So when one of the world’s great choirs returned to the Proms with the conductor who has guided them for over... Read more... |
La clemenza di Tito, Royal Opera review - light and dark in near-perfect balanceTuesday, 18 May 2021
It looked as if the Royal Opera might be trying to keep its distance with the first new production since lockdown. After all, Mozart’s last opera – only the Overture and March of the Priests in The Magic Flute remained to be composed in the fatal... Read more... |
Domina, Sky Atlantic review - a little less conversation, a little more action requiredSaturday, 15 May 2021
Ancient Rome has always been a popular playground for film and TV, whether it’s Ben Hur, Gladiator or the 2005 TV series Rome. This Italian-made series for Sky Atlantic was shot at the renowned Cinecittà Studios in Rome, where Visconti, Leone,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Silent ActionTuesday, 30 March 2021
Silent Action makes for a snappier title than the original La polizia accusa: il Servizio Segreto uccide, though the frenzied action in Sergio Martino’s 1975 thriller is anything but silent. The film opens with the grisly murders of three Italian... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Investigation of a Citizen Above SuspicionTuesday, 09 February 2021
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto) is Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s dark 1970s satire on state corruption. The... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Night PorterThursday, 14 January 2021
The Night Porter depicts the consuming sadomasochistic love affair of an SS officer, Max (Dirk Bogarde), and the Catholic woman, Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), whom he both tortures and protects when she is a teenage concentration camp inmate, and who... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Debussy, Respighi, The Red Book of OssorySaturday, 15 August 2020
Debussy: Images, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune Hallé/Sir Mark Elder (Hallé)That Debussy used the Geordie folksong The Keel Row in the first of his three Images for Orchestra is well known, and careful listening makes one realise that he... Read more... |
Matthew Kneale: Pilgrims review – adventures on the road to RomeSunday, 31 May 2020
Some things really never change. After a blatant cheat perpetrated by a well-connected lout, one of the humblest pilgrims in Matthew Kneale’s band reminds us that “rich folks’ justice is a penny to pay, poor folks’ justice is dangling from a rope”.... Read more... |
It’s True, It’s True, It’s True, Breach Theatre online review – a riveting watchTuesday, 07 April 2020
Artemisia Gentileschi has definitely had a hard time. Although she was an outstanding Renaissance painter in the style of Caravaggio, and the first woman to become a member of Florence’s Accademia di Arte del Disegno, her work was attributed to her... Read more... |
Agrippina, Royal Opera review - carry on up the CampidoglioTuesday, 24 September 2019
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted".... Read more... |
Prom 59: Benvenuto Cellini, Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Gardiner review - don't stop the carnivalTuesday, 03 September 2019
So we never got the ultimate Proms spectacular, the four brass bands at the points of the Albert Hall compass for Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, in the composer's 150th anniversary year. Yet Sir John Eliot Gardiner has learnt how to work the... Read more... |
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