Italy
The Seckerson Tapes: Conductor Gianluca MarcianòSunday, 20 October 2013
Bowing in at the London Coliseum for the latest revival of Anthony Minghella’s sumptuous staging of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, conductor Gianluca Marcianò is fast building a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and stylistically incisive of... Read more... |
Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Royal OperaFriday, 18 October 2013
First fanfare had to be for the Royal Opera House’s main gambit in Verdi bicentenary year, staging its first ever Sicilian Vespers 158 years after the Paris premiere. Any of Verdi’s operas from Rigoletto onwards deserves the red carpet treatment,... Read more... |
Puglia Sounds, Hoxton Square Bar & KitchenFriday, 11 October 2013
Puglia, otherwise known as Apulia, is the heel of the kinky boot that makes up Italy. It’s usually associated with the golden sands of the Ionian coast, the clear, sun-spun waters of Castellanata Marina, the palaces of Bari, and the sublime fish... Read more... |
L'Arpeggiata, Wigmore HallFriday, 11 October 2013
L’Arpeggiata are everything that crossover should be and everything that this arranged marriage of genres so often isn’t. The work of lutenist Christina Pluhar and her band of period musicians is organic and authentic, a blend of musics that amplify... Read more... |
Rigoletto, LSO, Noseda, BarbicanMonday, 16 September 2013
This season opener was about closure too. The London Symphony Orchestra was back at the office last night, but this fresh stretch of concerts opened with an opera it has been performing while also acquiring a suntan in Aix-en-Provence. A new cast of... Read more... |
Prom 72: Calleja, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, ZhangFriday, 06 September 2013
It was too little too late to redress the scant attention gives to Verdi’s bicentenary at this year’s Proms but the “Maltese Tenor” – Joseph Calleja – arrived with an eleventh hour offering of low-key Verdi arias and joining him was the Milanese... Read more... |
The Great BeautyMonday, 02 September 2013
Paolo Sorrentino's latest opens with a Japanese tourist keeling over at the mere sight of an ancient Roman vista: he takes a snap and wipes the sweat from his brow before his fatal fall to the floor. As the Small Faces sang in "Itchycoo Park", for... Read more... |
Liolà, National TheatreThursday, 08 August 2013
Sicilian location, Irish populace, Balkan Roma music: Richard Eyre’s production of a Pirandello bagatelle could easily have turned into the kind of Europudding more common in cinema. That it fairly dances over the pitfalls is due partly to a well-... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Glyndebourne Festival OperaFriday, 19 July 2013
Her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, Mariame Clément grumbles in the Glyndebourne programme that Don Pasquale “poses no specific ‘conceptual’ challenge” to the opera director. Sighs of relief all round. Donizetti’s final comic masterpiece turns... Read more... |
Simon Boccanegra, Royal OperaFriday, 28 June 2013
Revivals are for a conductor to show off some voices he’s discovered, do some role debuts, develop some careers, and as far as the production's concerned pour new wine into old bottles. There was some good new wine in this revival of Elijah... Read more... |
Shun Li and the PoetThursday, 20 June 2013
Italian documentarist Andrea Sigre’s first feature captures with great tenderness the delicate balance of friendship that grows up between two characters who live as relative outsiders in their community. From its Italian title Io sono Li (I Am Li... Read more... |
The Leopard: 50 years on from CannesWednesday, 15 May 2013
It took Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, melancholy last scion of a never very reproductive family, a lifetime to get round to writing one of the 20th century’s greatest novels. Publication of The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), based on... Read more... |
