1920s
Die ägyptische Helena, Fulham Opera review - mythological mess impressively handledWednesday, 20 October 2021
So Helen of Troy arrives at a church in Fulham via Poseidon’s island palace and a pavilion at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. She’s trickier than ever in the golden but tangled web Richard Strauss and his myth-and-symbol-mad poet Hugo von... Read more... |
Album: David Crosby - For FreeSaturday, 17 July 2021
David Crosby hit the headlines a few months back, another artist selling his song catalogue in order to secure his house. These days musicians must stay on the road to earn a living and sell records. It’s a punishing life, even for the young and fit... Read more... |
The Pursuit of Love, BBC One review - extravagantly entertainingMonday, 10 May 2021
Nancy Mitford's 1945 literary sensation looks poised to be the TV talking point of the season, assuming the first episode of The Pursuit of Love sustains its utterly infectious energy through two hours still to come. Adapted and directed by the... Read more... |
Psappha, Phillips, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester online review - Turnage world premiereFriday, 30 April 2021
Manchester’s Psappha have been proudly flying the flag of new and radical music right through the year of lockdown, and last night’s livestream, with two-and-a-half world premieres, one of them by Mark-Anthony Turnage, showed they haven’t given up... Read more... |
Die tote Stadt, Komische Oper Berlin, OperaVision review – when catharsis goes missingThursday, 04 March 2021
A word about grief. Many of us have learned a lot about it this past year; many knew about it before that. When someone we love dies, we grieve. This is normal. This is human. It is agony, but it’s not actually a mental illness. Having Paul, the... Read more... |
Jackie Kay: Bessie Smith review – vivid writing about the Empress of the BluesThursday, 18 February 2021
Blues singer Bessie Smith (1894-1937) had much more than an astonishingly powerful voice. It may already be almost a hundred years since she made her most significant recordings – she is from an era before amplification – and yet her unfailing... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Last WarningSunday, 14 February 2021
Stuttgart-born auteur and film theoretician Paul Leni, whose illusionistic production designs and direction of Waxworks (1924) helped define German Expressionist cinema, was 44 and approaching master status when he died of sepsis on 2 September... Read more... |
Bevan, LPO, Jurowski, RFH online review – never-ending storiesFriday, 01 January 2021
The LPO, and its soon-to-depart chief conductor Vladimir Jurowski, began its 2020 Vision season back in February. It set out to mix and match the music of three centuries and show how it echoes in contemporary works. Well, little of that turned out... Read more... |
Roald and Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse, Sky One review – twinkly tale for troubled timesFriday, 25 December 2020
They say "never meet your heroes". That may be true, but it forms the premise of a new TV drama concerning two of the world’s most famous children’s authors – Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl – who encounter each other at opposite ends of their life.... Read more... |
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom review - keeping things theatricalWednesday, 16 December 2020
There was always bound to be a hint of melancholy watching George Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Try as you might to focus on the film, you can never quite shake the fact that you’re watching the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, whose life... Read more... |
L'enfant et les sortilèges, VOPERA, LPO, Reynolds online – Ravel and Colette reimaginedThursday, 26 November 2020
Colette’s sharply fantastical libretto for Ravel’s second one-act opera imagines wrongs exercised upon objects and animals by a naughty child revisited by the victims upon the perpetrator. In a giddying venture which may be the most imaginative use... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla online review - muted celebrationsThursday, 19 November 2020
“This year was supposed to be so very different” said Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra when he spoke to theartsdesk earlier this year. Talk about an understatement. The CBSO has hardly been alone in... Read more... |
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