19th century
BloodborneFriday, 03 April 2015
Should games be challenging? One of the perennial design challenges of videogames. Make a game too tough and you'll put people off; make it too easy and you'll offer no interest. And then there's the tricky issue of individuals having vastly... Read more... |
Princess Ida, Finborough TheatreFriday, 27 March 2015
All Savoyards, whether conservative or liberal towards productions, have been grievously practised upon. They told us to expect the first professional London grappling with Gilbert and Sullivan’s eighth and, subject-wise, most problematic operetta... Read more... |
Bayadère - The Ninth Life, Shobana Jeyasingh Company, Linbury Studio TheatreThursday, 26 March 2015
The premise of last night’s world première made so much sense that one almost wondered why nobody had done it before now. Commissioned by the Royal Opera House and in its downstairs Linbury space, Shobana Jeyasingh, a classically-trained Indian... Read more... |
Wellington: Triumphs, Politics and Passions, National Portrait GallerySunday, 22 March 2015
One masterpiece and two superb portraits both dominate and sum up in vivid fashion the complex personality, long life and astonishing trajectory of the first Duke of WellingtonThere were something like 200 portraits done in his lifetime. The... Read more... |
RLPO 175th Birthday Concert, Petrenko, Liverpool Philharmonic HallSaturday, 14 March 2015
When the curtain came down on Liverpool’s year in the limelight as European Capital of Culture, back in 2008, there may have been some who thought that the party was over. Things in the city’s arts world were never going to the same, however, and... Read more... |
Ruddigore, Charles Court Opera, King's Head TheatreTuesday, 03 March 2015
How can a feisty village dame duetting “lackaday”s with the mounted head of a long-lost, nay, long-dead love be so deuced affecting? Ascribe it partly to the carefully-applied sentiment of Gilbert and Sullivan, slipping in a very singular 11-o’clock... Read more... |
Le Roi de Lahore, Chelsea Opera Group, QEHMonday, 02 March 2015
Now that opera houses mostly lack either the will or the funds to stage the more fantastical/exotic pageants among 19th century operas – the Royal Opera production of Meyerbeer’s mostly third-rate Robert le Diable was an unhappy exception – it’s... Read more... |
BBCSO, Segerstam, BarbicanMonday, 02 March 2015
The BBC Radio 3 announcer came on stage to introduce the concert and promised us "the 100 minutes" of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in the second half. Some of us smiled and assumed he (or his scriptwriter) had made a howler. Last time the Eighth was... Read more... |
DVD: Mr TurnerFriday, 27 February 2015
Nothing pinpoints the Oscars' absurdity more than the absences of Mike Leigh’s masterpiece as Best Film candidate, of Timothy Spall from the Best Actor list - New York and London critics as well as Cannes made some amends – and even of Marion Bailey... Read more... |
Salt and Silver, Tate BritainWednesday, 25 February 2015
Captured in monochromes ranging from the most delicate honeyed golds to robust gradations of aubergine and deep brown, the earliest photographs still provoke a shiver of surprise and excitement. Even now, their very existence seems miraculous, and... Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Welsh National OperaSunday, 22 February 2015
After 16 years one might expect a revival of a repertory opera like Hansel and Gretel to come up with a dusty look and frayed edges. But Benjamin Davis has done a brilliant job pumping the life back into Richard Jones’s memorable but intricate 1998... Read more... |
Philharmonic Octet Berlin, Queen Elizabeth HallSaturday, 14 February 2015
Even in a big orchestral concert, you’re bound to note Berlin Philharmonic principals as among the best instrumentalists in the world. I cited five in the central instalment of Simon Rattle’s Sibelius cycle on Wednesday. Of those, only viola-player... Read more... |
