theartsdesk Guide to Valentine's Day

Whether it’s consolation, stimulation, or just some old-fashioned romance you’re after this Valentine’s Day, theartsdesk’s team of writers (with a little help from a certain Bard from Stratford) have got it covered. Exhibitions to stir the heart, music to swell the soul, and comedy to help recover from both – we offer our pick of the most romantic of the arts. So from Giselle to Joe Versus the Volcano, from Barthes to the Bard, theartsdesk celebrates the many-splendoured thing that is love.

Judith Flanders

Valentine’s Day might not seem the ideal day to give your loved one a break-up memoir, but Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress isn’t everyone’s idea of a break-up memoir. Sure, Rhoda’s husband leaves her for a guy named Bob he met on gay.com, but in retelling her childhood growing up in a Mennonite world, she manages to be laugh-out-loud funny on almost every page. The only problem is, it’s so good that you may spend Valentine’s day alone, because your loved one won’t want to put it down.

The Gabriel Orozco retrospective is a romantic place to go, opening with his double photograph, My Hands are My Heart, showing the artist’s torso. His hands clutch a hidden object, which in the second photograph is held out, a piece of clay, impressed into the shape of a heart: the art of creation, the act of giving.

The Royal Ballet’s Giselle is running until 19 February, and Swan Lake even longer: what could be more romantic than the idea of dying for love – and at the Opera House you can watch it, not do it: romantic and pragmatic.

Veronica Lee

First dates can be tricky: a meal of messy spaghetti or a wham-bang film, for example, can scupper even true love at the outset. So why not choose the safer and guaranteed funnier option of a comedy gig? Leicester Comedy Festival is celebrating its 18th year and among those appearing on the night at gigs at various locations across the city are Jo Caulfield, Lucy Porter and Mark Thomas (pictured left).

The story of the faithful wife of Odysseus, keeping her suitors at bay as she awaits the return of her husband from war, is a powerful study on the power of obsessive love, and here Irish writer Enda Walsh gives the age-old story a nicely modern twist. Penelope is at the Hampstead Theatre until 5 March.

The poet laureate, who in Valentine offers her lover an onion rather than the more traditional red rose as a potent symbol of love, is a delightful old romantic beneath a sometimes acerbic, frequently funny, but always poignant exterior. Carol Ann Duffy's poem Valentine was first published in Mean Time.

Aleks Sierz

One of the most beautiful and intelligent books about love is Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, an anatomy of desire which explores the workings of the heart - and applies to everyone regardless of their sexuality. Best dipped into, and have some chocolate nearby to sweeten the taste of his occasionally acerbic remarks.

The best recent onstage rom-com was Midsummer, a play with songs by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre, which has just finished a nationwide tour. Never mind, you can still enjoy the playtext, which hilariously portrays the highs and lows of falling in love, and is fiendishly satirical and sometimes wonderfully ridiculous, as in "The Song of Bob’s Cock" (when a man’s you-know-what chats to him).

Those in need of a healing balm for Cupid’s arrows might avoid Polly Scattergood (pictured right), whose first CD oozes pain and teen angst. But the rest of us can enjoy her cracked voice, and appreciate her little tales of emotional friction and anti-rom-com stance - strange in the best possible way, and inspiring with it.

Russ Coffey

The “lost” Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan rom-com Joe Versus the Volcano is one of few in the genre to excel at both the “rom” and the “com”. In its fantastical world of “brain clouds”, existentialist luggage salesmen and orangeade-addicted South Sea Islanders, we find out that Meg Ryan (pictured left with Hanks) really can act (she plays three roles), and that she’s slightly better as a screwball than the lead. It’s worth watching on Valentine’s Day alone to hear that although “most of the world is asleep”, those that are awake “walk around in a state of total amazement”.

Underpinned by his love of bubblegum pop, Stephin Merritt’s three-disc masterpiece 69 Love Songs (by The Magnetic Fields) has men falling in love with women, men with men, women with women, women singing the lines of men, and enough general confusion to fill a French farce. It also has some of the most beautiful lyrics to come out of New York. And the funniest: "The day is beautiful and so are you/ My car is ugly but then, I’m ugly too... I’m the luckiest guy on the Lower East Side/ Cuz I’ve got wheels/ And you want to go for a ride” (“The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side”).

WH Auden was an unlikely Valentine himself, but as an ageing homosexual with a face like a “Christmas pudding left out in the rain” he sure knew a thing or two about the human heart. After Four Weddings and a Funeral, everyone suddenly knew Funeral Blues, but his Selected Poems, which ignores it, is still the collection to get. You’ll have to hunt around a bit for the love stuff, but when you start reading lines like, “But in my arms till break of day/ Let the living creature lie/ Mortal, guilty, but to me/ The entirely beautiful”, you’ll know you’ve found it.

Hilary Whitney

Open a bottle of wine – or two, because it’s very long – and settle down to watch Les Enfants du Paradis, directed by Marcel Carné. Set in 19th-century Paris, it is the story of the Funambules theatre, the beautiful actress Garance (Arletty) and the three men who fall in love with her. Consistently voted one of the best films of all time, it’s certainly one of the most romantic, but what makes it truly extraordinary is that it was ever made at all as it was filmed during the Nazi occupation of France - when the film was released in 1945, audiences immediately identified Garance as a symbol of a free France. Unfortunately, due to a wartime liaison with a German officer Arletty was obliged to spend a brief spell in prison but, as she allegedly explained at the time, “My heart is French but my ass is international.”

Watch the American trailer for Les Enfants du Paradis

Sondheim fans who have been suffering withdrawal symptoms from the great man’s 80th birthday celebrations last year can book tickets to see Company at the Southwark Playhouse - the first major revival of this Sondheim classic on the London stage for 15 years. A series of vignettes as seen through the eyes of Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor, Company ruminates the pros and cons of marriage (remember, this was written in the Seventies) and sometimes makes you wonder why people bother, but ultimately comes down firmly on the side of commitment.

Supposedly, the best things in life – such as love – are free, so enjoy a stroll across Waterloo Bridge or along the South Bank and arrive at the National Theatre’s foyer just in time - 5.45pm - to catch the Gill Manly Trio performing a repertoire of classics from Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

When Paramount bought the rights to Truman Capote’s 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the author wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly – for one thing, as readers of the book will know, the original Golightly is blonde. But Capote was overruled and Hepburn triumphantly made the role her own to say the least, creating one of Hollywood’s most enduring images and selling about a zillion little black dresses in the process. The Betsy Smith in Kilburn is hosting a special Valentine’s evening screening of this iconic romantic comedy in which there is much to enjoy: Hepburn’s artless, slightly brittle performance, Henry Mancini’s Oscar-winning score and some very nice outfits.

Howard Male

One Day by David Nicholls is in fact 20 days, but it’s the same day each year in the relationship of a couple who seem imperfectly perfect for each other, and yet… It’s a beautifully nuanced, funny and moving novel that men (or at least the ones I know) seem to be getting as much out of as women.

Find out a bit more about your loved one by giving them a copy of Nicolas Roeg’s most underrated film, Bad Timing (starring Harvey Keitel, Theresa Russell and Art Garfunkel). When love becomes this obsessive it can only end in disaster and possibly even a life sentence (although you’ll have to see the film to see how things pan out). They’ll either love it or hate it, but hopefully they still love you for having the initiative to buy them something a bit different!

Burt Bacharach wrote some of the greatest love songs of the 20th century (“Anyone Who Ever Had a Heart”, “The Look of Love”, “Close To You” and so on on). But less familiar is his collaborative album with Elvis Costello, Painted From Memory. Some might be surprised that Costello is a very convincing crooner and some of the tunes are up there with Bacharach’s best.

Alexandra Coghlan

Part philosophy primer, part love story, Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love is the Mills & Boon it’s OK to be seen reading on the train. Wearing his (borrowed) wisdom lightly, de Botton sets about untangling the knottiest of romantic issues, from differing tastes in footwear to the nature of love itself. Small and perfectly formed.

Forget Brokeback Mountain – the only gay cowboy romance worth its chaps comes courtesy of The Magnetic Fields. So Stephin Merritt can’t reliably hold a tune, it’s only got eight chords and is something of a niche genre, but "Papa Was a Rodeo" is still the consummate love song. Obstacles (messed-up parents), setbacks (the itinerant trailer-dwelling lifestyle) and a penchant for messy encounters with truckers all conspire to resolve in the happiest of all possible endings. It doesn’t hurt that Merritt writes possibly the best lyrics in the business either.

Watch "Papa Was a Rodeo" performed live

As scriptwriters for romance go, it just doesn’t get any better than Shakespeare (though Joe Calarco’s inspired take on Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare’s R & J – comes perilously close to outdoing its source). Oft-imitated but never bettered, however, is the charged verbal sparring of Beatrice and Benedick – surely the most articulate foreplay ever written. This summer offers the choice of two very different stagings of Much Ado About Nothing; David Tennant and Catherine Tate bring contemporary star-power to the Wyndham’s Theatre, while over at The Globe Eve Best and Charles Edwards will do battle in rather more traditional fashion.

Jasper Rees

The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith have chosen to a double bill of classic weepies. David Lean’s Brief Encounter at 6pm is followed by Casablanca at 8.50pm. In between they’re throwing in dinner for two, all for £30 a head. If the pair of you can survive two gutwrenching portrayals of lost love and the path not taken, then you’re in good shape.

Love is on iTunes. By which I mean The Beatles soundtrack to the Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas. From the dense harmonies of “Because” (“Love is all, love is you”) through to the rich full sigh of the French horn at the close of “Goodnight”, Love cites and samples well over 100 songs from the Fabs' back catalogue. It was produced by Sir George Martin, with a little help from his son Giles. The result is a long and winding fugue of juxtapositions, layerings, self-references and assorted magic tricks which may very well rank as the best compilation album ever made. (Others of course regard the entire project as a sacrilegious folly.) There is also a documentary of the making of the album.

The cast of Love perform on America's Got Talent

Graham Rickson

John Forsyth’s 1980 film Gregory’s Girl remains an upbeat tale of teenage yearning. It’s sweet, funny, and if you ignore the fact that none of the cast swear, a fairly accurate depiction of school life.

Afterwards, dim the lights and listen to The Beach Boys Today!, a pre-Pet Sounds album from 1965 that contains some of Brian Wilson’s greatest work. "Please Let Me Wonder" and "She Knows Me So Well" hit the right spot every time, and the singing is exquisite.

Graeme Thomson

Teena Marie (pictured left) and her brand of luxuriant, lubricious funk, soul and R&B is a potently priapic brew, perfect for Valentine's Day. Marie died on Boxing Day, aged just 54, but the vibrancy of her music is celebrated on a new compilation, Icon, released by Motown this week.

For those hard(ish) hearts not entirely comfortable with an overdose of saccharine schmaltz, even on Valentine’s Day, Edinburgh's Cameo cinema is hosting a one-off screening of the 1961 proto-rom-com Breakfast at Tiffany's. There is still much joy to be had in watching Audrey Hepburn's call-girl Holly Golightly juggling merrily with the affections of struggling writer Paul, played with immense charm by George Peppard. Love, of course, wins the day - and who could fail to swoon to the strains of Henry Mancini's "Moon River"?

Graham Fuller

If you’re not visiting Darmstadt, Germany, and are thus unable to view John William Waterhouse’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci at the Hessisches Landesmuseum on Valentine’s Day, an alternative is to watch and hear Ben Whishaw as John Keats reciting the lines that inspired Waterhouse’s painting of the knight and his enchantress in Bright Star. Has there been a better film about falling and being in love in a mortal storm? Jane Campion gorgeously depicts the rapturous, unconsummated - therefore doubly erotic - romance of the dying Keats and Fanny Brawne. Whishaw and Abbie Cornish (pictured below), who plays Fanny, are to swoon for.

Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale (which he composes on screen) is just a 150-year groove away from Roxy Music’s “Nightingale”. The number appears on Siren, the last in the suite of five great albums Roxy issued between 1972 and 1976 and which consecrated Ferry as the finest romantic songwriter of the era. The apogee is side two of Stranded (“Serenade”, “A Song for Europe”, “Mother of Pearl”, “Sunset”). It’s an exquisite paean to the state of being lovelorn, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to it together.

If The Mill on the Floss’s Maggie Tulliver is “the sexiest heroine in fiction”, as Martin Amis has averred, the most romantic may be Judith Earle in Rosamund Lehmann’s 1927 novel Dusty Answer. Lonely, passionate Judith’s fascination with the four boys and girl next door, and aloof Roddy in particular, survives adolescence, her affair with a college femme fatale, and brings her back into their orbit with mortifying consequences. One kiss here lingers long after you’ve closed the book.

David Nice

Over the past year, I've undertaken CD library-building surveys on various musical Romeo and Juliets - two for Radio 3's CD review, plus a slightly more generalised one for the BBC Music Magazine. So the winners are: for the earliest of the three greats, Berlioz's "dramatic symphony" Romeo et Juliette, John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Orchestra Revolutionaire et Romantique, the Monteverdi Choir and three outstanding soloists. The Philips CDs had been deleted when we aired the programme last weekend, but I understand Universal has reinstalled the tracks as downloads, and you can get CDs made up here.

Next, and shortest, of the three star-crossed narratives is Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture. The one I thought sounded the most gorgeous was Riccardo Muti's with the Philadelphia Orchestra, currently available on an EMI two-CD set with the last three symphonies. Prokofiev's complete three-act ballet produced a surprise last year: a mono recording made in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and conducted by that great ballet master Gennady Rozhdestvensky. But this Melodiya issue is getting hard to find, so if you want the perfect packaging - a heart on the sleeve - and more glamorous engineering, go for Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra on the bargain-priced LSO Live label.

Thomas H Green

Those whose heartstrings aren't easily tugged, those left cold by trite gift-card schmaltz and teddy bears, may find much to enjoy in the Argentinian thriller The Secret is in Their Eyes. Directed by Juan Jose Campanella, it's the story of a retired prosecutor who digs into a decades-old rape-murder as the basis for a novel he's writing. It's utterly gripping on this level alone. Woven into the narrative, however, is a stinging commentary on the nature of fascism alongside a prolonged unspoken love story worthy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Hardly obscure as it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film last year, it sneaked out on DVD recently and is thoroughly fulfilling viewing for lovers of mystery stories and, well, just lovers.

Most, if they know them at all, know The Only Ones from their deathless song "Another Girl, Another Planet" but there's much more to the late-Seventies band than that. The sense of desperate longing in their music, alongside frontman Peter Perrett's broken-hearted lyricism, is a potent combination. While it's not clear, upon occasion, whether the notoriously dissolute Perrett is singing about a lover or another shot of smack, their three studio albums are undeniably brim-full of fierce romance. Take the 1979 song "Out There in the Night" - "Compared to all of them you stand out/ You give me pure unspoiled love/ They're all reaching and grabbing/ All you did was give me love and love and love and love". The best place to start, to break some hearts, is probably their Best of.

William Shakespeare

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starvèd for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day and day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.