19th century
Brahms: A German Requiem, ENO Chorus, Wigglesworth, St George's Hanover SquareSaturday, 16 April 2016
There aren’t many opera choruses I’d want to hear singing Brahms’ Requiem, and still fewer I’d rush to hear. But the Olivier Award-winning ENO chorus is a different beast altogether – as responsive and flexible of tone as it is skilled with an all-... Read more... |
Lucia di Lammermoor, Royal OperaFriday, 08 April 2016
Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera in which men spend an awful lot of time talking about women, and very little actually talking to them. (Which, if nothing else, ensures a rather more dramatic denouement than a frank conversation about everyone’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Berlin: Three BalletsSunday, 03 April 2016
In London, seeing the same ballet company do three different pieces in three different theatres over four nights would be some kind of festival. In Berlin, it's just business as usual – albeit quite a busy week! – for the hard-working Staatsballett... Read more... |
Schubert Lieder, Gerhaher, Huber, Wigmore HallFriday, 01 April 2016
In the Wigmore's Lieder prayer meetings, baritone Christian Gerhaher is the high priest. There are good reasons for this, but given that the innermost circle of Wigmore Friends pack out his concerts, you do feel that the slightest criticism might... Read more... |
Russia and the Arts, National Portrait GalleryMonday, 21 March 2016
A good half of the portraits in Russia and the Arts are of figures without whom any conception of 19th century European culture would be incomplete. A felicitous subtitle, “The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky”, provides a natural, even easy point of... Read more... |
Doctor Thorne, ITVMonday, 07 March 2016
As the camera lingered lovingly over landscaped gardens and ravishing English countryside with a stately home parked squarely in the back of the frame, one could hardly avoid slipping into a Downtonesque reverie. Even more so when the assembled posh... Read more... |
Giselle, Royal BalletSaturday, 27 February 2016
One of the secrets to enjoying life is mastering the creative use of disappointment. Many in the Covent Garden audience last night were no doubt deeply disappointed not to be seeing Natalia Osipova's legendary portrayal of the title role in Giselle... Read more... |
Norma, English National OperaThursday, 18 February 2016
In the light of what follows, it's probably best to be clear that I'm completely behind the artistic side of ENO in rejecting a 25 per cent reduction of the chorus's annual salary, tied to a shorter season. A full-time chorus of this size is the... Read more... |
Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, National GalleryWednesday, 17 February 2016
Art exhibitions hardly seem comparable with battery farming, and yet just as our insatiable appetite for cheap meat gives rise to some troubling consequences, so too does the demand for definitive exhibitions that require vulnerable works of art to... Read more... |
Wheeldon Triple Bill, Royal BalletSaturday, 13 February 2016
Christopher Wheeldon's new ballet Strapless scores a first on a number of counts. It’s the first co-production between the Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi (London gets first dibs – Moscow doesn’t get the goods for another 12 months). It forms part of... Read more... |
The Mighty Handful, ROH Orchestra, Pappano, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 09 February 2016
What fun it must have been to attend any of the St Petersburg Free Music School concerts during the second half of the 19th century. Balakirev, idiosyncratic mentor of the group briefly together as the "Mighty Handful", and his acolytes – Borodin,... Read more... |
Red Velvet, Garrick TheatreWednesday, 03 February 2016
Lolita Chakrabarti’s impassioned debut has only gained topicality since its 2012 Tricycle incarnation. Trevor Nunn’s all-white Wars of the Roses and #OscarsSoWhite, among others, have fanned its flames, while quips about a paranoid Russian regime... Read more... |
