Features & Interviews
Trevor Nunn: 'I'm amazed by Harley Granville Barker's prescience and extraordinary modernity'
Sunday, 10 February 2019
So here we are with another edition of IQ, and the subject this week is theatre. Question one: which actor originated several leading roles in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, including Marchbanks in Candida, Dubedat in The Doctor's Dilemma, and Jack Tanner in Man and Superman? Answer: Harley Granville Barker.
theartsdesk in Tromsø: the celluloid Cold War
Monday, 28 January 2019
With Russian spies murdering people in the UK, a Norwegian pensioner jailed in Moscow on spying charges, Russian hackers believed to have meddled in both the US presidential election and the EU referendum, diplomats thrown out of various countries and Donald Trump being portrayed as Putin’s puppet, it’s hard not to feel that the Cold War is being warmed up for the 21st century.
theartsdesk Q&A: Shirley Collins - '...
Friday, 25 January 2019
When Shirley Collins appears at The Roundhouse next week, it will be 50 years since she last played there. On 30 May 1969, she and her sister Dolly...
Director Alexandria Bombach: 'I feel like a...
Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Nadia Murad caught the world’s attention when she spoke at the United Nations Security Council. She spoke of living under ISIS, daily assaults,...
theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway...
Saturday, 19 January 2019
Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear...
'Bringing things to life is what opera is all about': Robert Howarth on a 'Magic Flute' with a difference
Opera North's Mozart conductor on taking a careful look at a masterpiece |
Best of 2018: Classical concerts
Abundant megatalent in works great and small |
Best of 2018: Opera
A year more remarkable for high musical values than any wealth of great UK productions |
Global fiction: the pick of 2018
From Iraq to Japan, a baker's dozen of translated novels to widen literary horizons |
theartsdesk in Brno: Czech 100th feted through Janáček and Smetana
Rarities in a festival featuring an entire operatic canon, plus heartfelt celebrations |
'I’ve told everyone that it’s a comedy – but will anyone laugh?' Jonathan Dove on his new Marx opera
Top British composer awaits Bonn premiere of his new work about a German in London |
theartsdesk in Gothenburg - Wagner's gold turns green
Stephen Langridge talks about his eco-friendly Swedish 'Ring' |
10 Questions for DJ / producer Rob Smith of Smith & Mighty
Bristol bass movers and shakers rightly getting their due |
Robert Hastie: 'a seam of love runs through the play' - interview
The director talks about Macbeth in the candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, cross-gender casting and the director's role |
Don Quixote rides again, and again
The RSC's stage version reaches the West End, while Terry Gilliam's film is stuck in a legal vortex |
First Person Plural: the Calidore String Quartet on music for their torn nation
How Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Janáček and Golijov speak for our troubled times |
Refreshing the sonic spectrum: disability and excellence in British orchestras
A musical evolution for the 21st Century |
More Blood, More Tracks review - Bob Dylan opens up
The fourteenth volume in the Bootleg Series is a keeper |
theartsdesk in Stockholm: the Birgit Nilsson Prize unites two great Wagnerian sopranos
Nina Stemme does honour to her compatriot, who would have been 100 this year |
Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018): from Bellini to 'Barcelona'
Glimpses of the Spanish soprano who could float a line like no other |
James Graham: 'the country of Shakespeare no longer recognises arts as a core subject'
Full transcript of the playwright's passionate speech about the importance of the arts at the Hospital Club's h100 Awards |
Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto: 'We figured Molière would have toyed with it too'
The co-adaptors of the RSC's new 'Tartuffe' talk about translating a French classic to our times now |
10 Questions for singer Live Foyn Friis
Charismatic Norwegian singer on her journey through genre |
'I read French from left to right and Arabic from right to left': remembering Algerian rebel rocker Rachid Taha
Recalling a night out drinking in Paris with the Algerian rocker who died this week |
Jeanie O'Hare: 'The play taught me how European we really are'
The playwright introduces 'Queen Margaret', her new play for the Royal Exchange, Manchester |
Sir Peter Hall: a day of thanksgiving and celebration for a colossus of culture
A year after his death, the great director was honoured by the stars at Westminster Abbey and the National Theatre |
'You won't be able to handle this lady': remembering Fenella Fielding
The vampish comic actress has died at 90 not long after receiving an OBE |
Like a baton out of hell: Conductors at the 2018 Proms
Chris Christodoulou snaps mostly men at work, but the women are coming |
'I saw that death is beautiful, unspeakable and strange': on filming 'Island'
Filmmaker Steven Eastwood introduces his documentary about the last moments of life |
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