Russia
Anna Karenina: The RaveThursday, 06 September 2012
A curtain rises at the start of Joe Wright’s thrilling film version of Anna Karenina only for the finish several hours later to be accompanied in time-honoured fashion by the words “the end”. But for all the deliberate theatrical artifice of a movie... Read more... |
Anna Karenina: The PanThursday, 06 September 2012
“You can’t ask why about love,” Aaron Johnson’s Count Vronsky croons tenderly to his beloved, pink lips peeking indecently out through his flasher’s mac of a moustache. Maybe you can’t, but you certainly can ask why you’d take a thousand-page... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Holland Park OperaSaturday, 14 July 2012
There are no two ways about this: Eugene Onegin is a masterpiece. The plotting is so thrillingly concise, the cunningly built-up musical passion so astonishingly detailed that there simply is no excuse for an underpowered or melodramatic production... Read more... |
Storyville: Hitler, Stalin, and Mr Jones, BBC FourFriday, 06 July 2012
The Storyville documentary strand must rank as one of the special glories of British television. As its opening titles unfold in different languages, we can only celebrate programmes that still give time to international stories, told in their own... Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, Longborough FestivalWednesday, 27 June 2012
Janáček’s obsession with Russia has always intrigued me: something to do with a shared Slav ancestry traceable to peasant roots being crunched to pieces by the modern world. Gone are the rolling paragraphs and the vast, empty fields and sky. In... Read more... |
Silent SoulsFriday, 22 June 2012
Fully retitling a foreign-language film for international release is a risky business. But it works very well with Russian director Alexei Fedorchenko’s melancholic drama Silent Souls.The original Russian title was Ovsyanki, the name of a bird that... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Measure For Measure, Shakespeare's GlobeWednesday, 25 April 2012
What a joy this once-in-a-generation season is. From Moscow comes this free-wheeling production of Shakespeare's great morality play, and one that also makes remarkably free with the text too. Even those familiar with Measure For Measure will be... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Arts Patron Donatella FlickTuesday, 17 April 2012
Donatella Flick, one of Britain's most important arts patrons, is furious. "Madness!" she cries in her lush Italian voice. "This is a country that was fantastic, and now there's a demolition going on, bit by bit!" We're sitting in Sir Winston... Read more... |
Verdi Requiem, Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus, Gergiev, Barbican HallThursday, 05 April 2012
After conducting two performances of Parsifal since Saturday and one of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, most human beings would be spending a day curled up at home. But Valery Gergiev doesn’t know what carpet slippers look like. Besides, he’s currently on... Read more... |
Uncle Vanya, The Print Room, LondonMonday, 02 April 2012
A play of boundaries, limitations, barriers, one that gazes outwards while never crossing the threshold, Uncle Vanya is often betrayed by the physical space of major stagings. In a new production at Notting Hill’s The Print Room the audience find... Read more... |
Parsifal, Mariinsky Opera/Gergiev, Wales Millennium CentreSunday, 01 April 2012
Is it my imagination, or are we getting more Wagner in concert than we used to? It could be a welcome development. How marvellous not to have to tremble at the thought of the latest flight of directorial fantasy: Isolde pregnant, Siegfried as an... Read more... |
Punk's not dead: Moscow's Pussy Riot answer back to PatriarchTuesday, 27 March 2012
The Moscow girl punk band Pussy Riot say their impromptu performance inside Russia’s major cathedral of their song “Holy Shit” was a prayer. They were replying to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill who called it “blasphemy”.Speaking at a... Read more... |
