Barbican
judith.flanders
Surrealism, it occurred to me while looking round this fine exhibition, is like pornography: it is hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The Surreal House examines what precisely is conjured up in our collective minds by the word “house”: houses are, of course, simply places to live, but their emotional resonance is much deeper, and it is this resonance, and how it acted on, and in turn was acted upon, by a century of artists working in the Surrealist mode, that is on display here.The early Surrealists, led by André Breton, were deeply influenced by Freud. Freud saw the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A second coming for Michael Clark's recent Barbican commission Come, Been, Gone. Eight months after the London premiere (on which I opined unenthusiastically below last October), he has added another 20 minutes of choreography, they said, with new costumes and artworks. The revision is also now artfully retitled Come, Been and Gone. Not comma-Gone. And Gone. Makes all the difference. Furthermore, note the following revisions to the individual section names: the original "Come" is now entitled "Been", "Been" has actually gone, and been replaced by a new "Come" (that’s the inserted part) while Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
If the second half of the 20th century saw opera throttled by existential crises, and left composers wondering whether the only future for the art form was for it to be hung out to dry, or to become an arcane intellectualised annex for the musical games then in vogue, Gerald Barry's one-act opera, La plus forte (2006) - receiving its UK premiere in a concert performance last night - marks the end of hostilities. So effortlessly does Barry seem to rise above the tangled, stagnant realities of recent operatic and musical convention, and return and restore the art form to the business of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A beloved regular of concert hall, radio and recording, the music of Vivaldi has more or less failed to find its way into the contemporary opera house. If we are to believe his own claims, the composer died with over 90 operas to his credit – double the output of even the extraordinarily prolific Handel – making the omission all the more striking. And suspicious. In a field in which "lost" gems are resurrected every day, a measure of cynicism must inevitably accompany so apparently rich a furrow that so many have left untouched. Applying themselves with characteristic energy, Giovanni Read more ...
james.woodall
Tonight at the Barbican's Pit, kicking off a run of ten performances, a rather unusual piece of theatre opens. It's not a big play, it probably won't make great waves and it does involve reading surtitles. Called Iram, it's an Israeli adaptation, in Hebrew, of the stories of the Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem. Outside Israel - excluding, at a pinch, bookish circles in transatlantic Jewish communities (Aleichem emigrated from the Ukraine to the US before the First World War) - this prolific chronicler of late 19th-century shtetl life will grace few home libraries. The word "shtetl" might also Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
"We need to inform you officially. Mr Walter, you died yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss." It comes as no great surprise to learn that Michel van der Aa’s opera After Life is based on a Japanese film. The Borgesian hyper-real scenario, the no-place location and meditative pacing all point, or rather - rejecting anything so crass - bow respectfully to their original source. Adopting the premise of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film of the same name, Van der Aa has created a multimedia opera that both asks and answers the question: if you could take only one memory with you after death, what would it be Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“All over the world children are safe – but not here, not on my ship.” Despite its wild pack of homeless children, a flesh-eating crocodile and some of the most gut-punching depictions of parental grief in all literature, J M Barrie’s Peter Pan has somehow been consigned to the theatrical remainders bin, its old-fashioned sentimentality acceptable really only at Christmas, or in pantomime form. David Greig’s new adaptation for the National Theatre of Scotland celebrates the author’s anniversary year by wrenching the story out of the lace-trimmed Edwardian nursery, and bringing it squealing Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Can we clear something up once and for all, please? Yet again this week an all too familiar headline caught my eye: “Is Juan Diego Florez the heir apparent to Pavarotti?” Or words to that effect. Why do these lazy (and/or ill-informed) editors and their headline writers keep asking the same rhetorical question? Surely they should know by now that the answer is a great big resounding “no”. Not because Florez is inferior or less famous or lacks the potential for superstardom (the marketing men have already gone into overdrive about him) but quite simply because he is a completely, utterly, Read more ...
edward.seckerson
It didn’t take long for memories of Anatoly Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake to fade in the dramatic shift Stateside which dominated Antonio Pappano’s latest outing with the London Symphony Orchestra. Every tone fleetingly shimmered as Liadov’s dreamy miniature hinted at an evening full of Eastern promise. A touch of Scriabinesque harmonic ripeness in the middle of the piece suggested the possibility of an effulgent climax. But none was forthcoming. Silky playing from the muted LSO strings rarely rose above mezzo forte. And then we were crossing not a lake but an ocean; the shores of the USA came Read more ...
David Nice
It's still not clear whether his clever, brilliantly orchestrated compositions are here to stay (though they're certainly having a good run at the moment). As a conductor, he's not yet nimble on his feet. Yet after yesterday evening's colossal recital, I doubt if anyone would deny that Thomas Adès is a pianist of the first order, a dramatic master of keyboard colour who pulls you into his edgy but often very beautiful sound world and sometimes casts you adrift from your critical moorings.It was a crazy programme for a night of the full moon. The tonal beauty was what I'd expected of Krystian Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is there such a thing as iPod theatre for a new digital generation? Given the enormous boom in site-specific performances and the growing use of electronic gadgets, the answer seems like yes, and this new show by non zero one - a group of recent graduates from Royal Holloway, University of London - is billed as an interrogation of the “new methods of communication that are designed to connect us over huge distances and in all scenarios”. An example of participant theatre, the 50-minute piece, which opened today, is a good illustration of both the highs and lows of experimental performance.At Read more ...
james.woodall
First, the name. There’s no family link between the 57-year-old German composer and Hitler’s Doctor Death. This Goebbels cuts an impressive figure. Solidly built, with thick white hair and slightly cherubic features, and speaking fluent English, he’s above all accessible and unpretentious. Today, in Germany especially, but also abroad - in the States and Britain, where his renown is growing - the name Heiner Goebbels evokes not hatred but magical stage ambiences, lyrical and parodic song, strange music and hypnotic dance: new wonders from a new Germany.In our conversation, which takes place Read more ...