Spain
Yerma, Gate TheatreSaturday, 12 November 2011
If you didn't know Frederico García Lorca's Yerma before this show, you probably wouldn't be any better informed after watching Natalie Abrahami's engaging but flawed production. In “a new version by Anthony Weigh”, as it says on the programme cover... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Dvořák, De Falla, Music Makes a City (DVD)Saturday, 29 October 2011
Dvořák: Symphony No 9, Czech Suite, Two Slavonic Dances Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/José Serebrier (Warner Classics)It’s easy to become a little obsessed with obscure, underrated music. You bang on and on about works which you’re convinced... Read more... |
This World: Spain's Stolen Babies, BBC TwoWednesday, 19 October 2011
The scale of the operation was hard to take in, as was the extent of the cover-up. Between 1940 and 1990, it’s estimated that up to 30,000 babies were trafficked in Spain. It started under the military dictatorship of Franco, but it ended long after... Read more... |
The Skin I Live InThursday, 25 August 2011
Cinematic virtuoso Pedro Almodóvar’s contribution to the body horror subgenre is a sumptuous nightmare with the precision and looming malevolence of its psychotic surgeon’s blade. His 19th feature is a film for our age – an age which has seen... Read more... |
Anyone for Demis? How the World Invaded the Charts, BBC FourFriday, 19 August 2011
"Anyone for Demis?" wasn’t the only question posed by this trawl through some of the foreign – not American - popular music that’s been hugged to our collective bosom. That the large, hirsute, kaftan-shrouded Greek wonder that’s Demis Roussos was... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Jackie Leven/ Jen Brister/ Doris Day Can F**k OffSaturday, 13 August 2011
Physically reduced he may have been, but his talents were as expansive as ever, and more than capable of holding a small room captivated with just voice and guitar. Whereas in recent years Leven has released a somewhat bewildering range of music... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Osborne, BBC Philharmonic, MenaSaturday, 23 July 2011
If much of the Austro-German repertoire is about hiking to a spiritual peak, the Franco-Spanish is about diving down to the orchestral depths. The music of Ravel, Debussy and Falla has beefy shoulders and powerful legs. But the vast watery expanse... Read more... |
Cell 211Thursday, 14 July 2011
A mean, muscular and unflinching display of concentrated brutality and shaved-down storytelling, the Spanish thriller Cell 211 is armed with the furious intensity of its caged environment and a chain of events which cascades like dominos over and... Read more... |
Joanna MacGregor, Wigmore Hall/ Sol Picó, Sadler's Wells TheatreSunday, 26 June 2011
The two-course evening out is made possible by the Wigmore Hall’s late Friday-night concerts, so if you get out of a central-London show - or dinner - by, say, 9.30, you can add a second layer of entertainment at 10. In my case, a ferociously poor... Read more... |
Sónar 2011: Day 1Friday, 17 June 2011
“This is what Ibiza used to be like,” said the man dancing next to me. I've never been to the White Isle, so I have to take his word for it, but he presented a very convincing argument that the commercialisation of dance music's Mediterranean Mecca... Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Opéra de LyonMonday, 13 June 2011
Travelling by Eurostar, or plane, to the continent and buying a ticket, all for less than the cost of a Covent Garden stalls seat, might entice if you wanted to see a certain opera, singer or conductor. But to go so far for the look of a staging?... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Western Sahara: The World's Most Remote Film FestivalSunday, 22 May 2011
During the 1960s, when decolonisation movements were sweeping the world, it was joked that, after achieving independence, a country had to do three things: design a flag, launch an airline and found a film festival. Western Sahara has a flag but... Read more... |
