Russia
Ex Kirov ballet chief takes not-so-Bolshoi jobWednesday, 28 October 2015
The great Bolshoi ballerina Ludmila Semenyaka once told me that you need the claws of a tiger and the hide of a rhinoceros to survive at Moscow's iconic theatre. Her bitter words came to mind yesterday morning when I saw the Twitter feed of the... Read more... |
Red ArmyWednesday, 07 October 2015
There’s a screen quotation late in this remarkable documentary that reads, “An outstanding athlete cannot belong totally to himself.” The words are those of Soviet ice hockey trainer Anatoly Tarasov, who's one of the presences behind this story of... Read more... |
DVD: Hard to Be a GodTuesday, 29 September 2015
It’s easier to admire than enjoy 2013's Hard to Be a God. The 177-minute final film directed by Leningrad-born Alexei German depicts medieval squalor and butchery so intensely that the viewer is forced to shrink from its portrait of life... Read more... |
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, English National OperaSunday, 27 September 2015
“The music quacks, hoots, pants and gasps”: whichever of his Pravda scribes Stalin commandeered to demolish Shostakovich’s “tragedy-satire” in January 1936, two years into its wildly successful stage history, didn’t mean that as a compliment, but it... Read more... |
DVD: CitizenFourFriday, 18 September 2015
The repercussions of the revelations about intelligence gathering by American and other surveillance services made by US whistleblower Edward Snowden have proved huge. Laura Poitras’s documentary CitizenFour is no less revelatory about the process... Read more... |
Prom 70: Lugansky, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, TemirkanovTuesday, 08 September 2015
Russian classics evening at the Proms? It could be what Alexandra Coghlan, writing about Prom 69, described as “another night at the musical office”. But given the masters in charge of two masterpieces fusing storytelling with symphonic sweep and... Read more... |
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.Friday, 14 August 2015
The TV series on which Guy Ritchie has based his new spy-buddies movie first appeared on the small screen (in black and white) in 1964, when Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin welcomed us into their secret lair in New York and introduced themselves as... Read more... |
CD: Iris DeMent - The Trackless WoodsWednesday, 12 August 2015
Iris DeMent’s settings of poems by the great 20th century poet Anna Akhmatova are as original as they are courageous: it's so easy to fall short of the genius displayed by the Russian mistress of the lyric verse. This is a work of love and devotion... Read more... |
Hard to Be a GodTuesday, 04 August 2015
Don’t on any account be late for the first couple of minutes of the woolly mammoth that is Russian director Alexei German’s last film, Hard to Be a God, since the opening narrative voiceover gives a rare suggestion of explanatory background to a... Read more... |
Bolshoi Ballet acid attack leader loses his jobFriday, 31 July 2015
Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi Ballet artistic director whose sight was maimed two years ago by an acid attack organized by a disgruntled dancer, will lose his job when his contract expires next spring. Bolshoi Theatre chief Vladimir Urin announced... Read more... |
Prom 14: Prokofiev Piano ConcertosWednesday, 29 July 2015
Gergiev’s programme for this concert raised eyebrows when the Proms were announced: all five Prokofiev piano concertos, presented in chronological order, over the course of a long evening. As it turned out, he had some good reasons for his plan. The... Read more... |
Three Days in the Country, National TheatreWednesday, 29 July 2015
The trouble with the classics is that they are long, complex and difficult. But today’s sensibility favours the quick, simple and easy. So it is no surprise that the National Theatre have opened its doors to Patrick Marber, who has taken Ivan... Read more... |
