19th century
The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, BBC TwoSunday, 01 February 2015
Alice is always with us; the most quoted work of literature, after the Bible and Shakespeare. In fact, Desert Island Discs should probably add Alice to the mandatory Bible and Shakespeare as an automatic inclusion for the survival kit. Now 150 years... Read more... |
Onegin, Royal BalletThursday, 29 January 2015
The habit among ballet critics of being simultaneously down on John Cranko's 1965 Onegin and up on Kenneth MacMillan's 1974 Manon is a curious one. The two have many similarities, from their basis in novels that became operas (though Prévost's Manon... Read more... |
Andrea Chénier, Royal OperaWednesday, 21 January 2015
What kind of regime, asks Gérard, talks of justice while killing poets? It’s a question the answer to which suggests itself all too swiftly this week, briefly turning a revolutionary romp of an opera into something rather more chilling. Playing... Read more... |
Winterreise, Bostridge, Adès, Barbican HallTuesday, 13 January 2015
Ian Bostridge’s relationship with Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise goes back 30 years. Many of those years have been spent in the public eye (and ear), allowing us to watch the tenor grow and grow-up with this music. It’s been over a decade since... Read more... |
Royal Danish Ballet Soloists and Principals, Peacock Theatre, LondonSaturday, 10 January 2015
“A link in the chain of beauty” – that’s how the choreographer August Bournonville, in the 1840s, wanted every dancer in the Royal Danish Ballet to regard their art. And, remarkably, the chain of beauty we now call the Bournonville style has... Read more... |
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Dudamel, RFHFriday, 09 January 2015
Youth may have vanished from the title, and its first flush is gone from the cheeks of most of the young persons. Now they’re in their prime, a magnificent sight – and the sound, too, is that of a world-class orchestra with a voice. Which we heard... Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 08 January 2015
The twelve days of Christmas may be over, but I have good news for ballet fans in London: a whole new batch of presents for you has washed up at the Coliseum, and it's overflowing with lords-a-leaping, ladies dancing, and swans-a-swimming. In Derek... Read more... |
Un Ballo in Maschera, Royal OperaFriday, 19 December 2014
Covent Garden’s masked balls circling around the New Year feature not the seasonal bourgeois Viennese couple and a bat-winged conspirator but a king, his best friend’s wife and – excessively so in this production – the grim reaper. Big voices are... Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Royal OperaTuesday, 09 December 2014
Eternal love is in the air, not seasonal fluff, at the Royal Opera this December. Later in the month Verdi’s most ecstatic duet, in Un ballo in maschera, will find his Riccardo and Amelia briefly playing Tristan and Isolde, very much in the shadow... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Two Peer Gynts and a HamletMonday, 08 December 2014
Not so much a national hero, more a national disgrace. That seems to be the current consensus on Peer Gynt as Norway moves forward from having canonized the wild-card wanderer of Ibsen's early epic. It’s now 200 years since Norway gained a... Read more... |
Levit, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 04 December 2014
If Brahms’s First Symphony has long been dubbed “Beethoven’s Tenth”, then the 23-year-old Rachmaninov’s First merits the label of “Tchaikovsky’s Seventh” (a genuine candidate for that title, incidentally, turns out to be a poor reconstruction from... Read more... |
Queyras, Melnikov, Wigmore HallMonday, 01 December 2014
Even the most reluctant of completists should find the prospect of the Beethoven works for cello and piano undaunting. In their totality, these pieces consist of just five sonatas and three sets of variations, which fit neatly on to just two CDs, or... Read more... |
