Rome
Tosca, Royal Opera review - Ailyn Pérez steps in as the most vivid of divasThursday, 25 September 2025
Forget Anna Netrebko, if you ever gave the Russian Scarpia’s former cultural ambassador much thought (theartsdesk wouldn’t). It should be uphill from now on as Aleksandra Kurzak takes over the role of a diva out of her depth. Last night, though, she... Read more... |
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - a great company reduced to brillianceMonday, 15 September 2025
So it’s come to this: WNO’s autumn season reduced to two operas, a Tosca borrowed from Opera North and a revival of their own Candide from two years back; then two next spring. a revival of their Valleys saga Blaze of Glory (about mine closures and... Read more... |
Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House review - a dying artSaturday, 02 August 2025
Many readers and writers think of epistolary novels as old-fashioned, just as letter writing itself can seem a bit quaint nowadays. The genre became popular during the 18th and 19th centuries following the success of Samuel Richardson’s ... Read more... |
Conclave review - secrets and lies in the Vatican's inner sanctumSaturday, 30 November 2024
“You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground,” as Bob Dylan sang, but Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) isn’t finding it quite that simple.The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and in his last act in this world he... Read more... |
Gladiator II review - can lightning strike twice?Sunday, 17 November 2024
It has been nearly 25 years since Russell Crowe enjoyed his Oscar-winning finest hour as Maximus in Ridley Scott’s thunderous epic, Gladiator, and now Sir Ridley has brought us the next generation. Stepping up to the plate is Paul Mescal as Lucius (... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - the Vatican, the Blitz, a trip to Poland and a surfin' nightmareSaturday, 12 October 2024
ConclaveDirector Edward Berger won an Oscar for his last feature, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), but here he concerns himself with the more intimate and claustrophobic battlefield of the Vatican. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and under... Read more... |
First Person: conductor Robert Hollingworth on a four-choir rarity by BenevoliFriday, 04 October 2024
I’m sitting in a café in Kraców, Poland, rehearsals finished for the resurrection of a mass setting written nearly 400 years ago in Rome. Nothing particularly odd about this except that the virtually unknown composer – Orazio Benevoli, master of the... Read more... |
Tosca, Opera Holland Park review - passion and populismWednesday, 29 May 2024
Set in a tensely polarised Roman neighbourhood, with an election in the offing and radicals scrapping with reactionaries under poster-plastered walls, Stephen Barlow’s smart update of Tosca from 1800 to 1968 might have felt like a double dose of... Read more... |
Verdi's Requiem, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Pappano, Parco della Musica, Rome review - peak poignancyThursday, 08 February 2024
Antonio Pappano is at a hinge in his illustrious career, as the exciting transfer across London from Covent Garden to the London Symphony Orchestra proceeds, and the word "Emeritus" is added to his title as Music Director of his home-from-home in... Read more... |
L'immensità review - enigmatic portrait of a trans teen in an unhappy familyThursday, 10 August 2023
Emanuele Crialese’s latest, L’immensità, is an oddity. It’s perfectly formed, yet still feels as if its final reel went missing. Its title – usually translated as “infinity” – is typical of this enigmatic quality. “L’immensità” turns out to be... Read more... |
Album: Måneskin - Rush!Friday, 20 January 2023
Rock'n'roll rejuvenators, Eurovision winners with more of their songs streamed online than there are people in the world, the glammy young Roman rockers have opened for The Stones in Las Vegas, delivered a city-stopping sold-out show at Rome’s... Read more... |
Tosca, English National Opera review - a tale of two erasSaturday, 01 October 2022
Rome, 14/15 June 1800: the specifics of the original Sardou melodrama are preserved in Puccini’s thriller mixing love, lust, religion and tyranny. Many productions move forward in time, and sometimes change the place, with ease: after all, feudalist... Read more... |
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