Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Michael Tanner

Murder most fine

Tosca English National Opera, in rep until 10 July La Fille du régiment The Royal Opera, in rep until 3 June Tosca has had several new productions at ENO in the past 20 years which have proved rapidly perishable. It’ll be interesting to see whether the new production, with set designs by Frank Philipp Schlössmann and the direction in the hands of Catherine Malfitano, proves more durable, though I think it is certain that one major modification will be effected. The opening chords, giving the audience a pretty vivid impression of what it would be like to be a torture victim of Scarpia’s, were tremendous, immensely loud and crushing, and

Robin Holloway

New World vision

Miami Beach seems an unlikely venue for a noble, idealistic artistic venture. Yet it is here that the New World Symphony has made its base for more than 20 years. It’s a sort of equivalent to our own National Youth Orchestra, with the same sense of joyous dedication wherein hard work becomes fun; but with the important difference that these young players are geared from the start towards the professional life of an orchestral musician. Rehearsals are strictly timed, there is a weekly stipend and players will all be seeking, and hopefully finding, positions in fully grown-up institutions all over the United States and the wider world, where many alumni

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Surface pleasure

I know this is going to get me into an awful lot of trouble, but I really don’t think the TV adaptation of Martin Amis’s Money (BBC2, Sunday, Wednesday) was that bad. I know this is going to get me into an awful lot of trouble, but I really don’t think the TV adaptation of Martin Amis’s Money (BBC2, Sunday, Wednesday) was that bad. Of course, though, I do see the main problem — which was neatly described in the Telegraph by Michael Deacon. Deacon quoted two of the paragraphs that made the book the defining English novel of the Eighties: Deafened with caffeine, I was just a hot robot,

Saturday

William Cook

Comic timing

New Labour inspired a golden age of political comedy. William Cook looks to satire’s future Although few will mourn Gordon Brown’s departure, his drawn-out demise should be a source of sadness for comedy aficionados, be they red, yellow or blue. For New Labour’s most unlikely legacy was to inspire a renaissance in political comedy. It may have ended with a disgruntled whimper rather than a bang, but for anyone with a taste for satire these were 13 golden years. When Tony Blair first swept into Downing Street in 1997, a lot of left-wing comics seemed bemused. They’d been attacking the Tories for 18 years. Now that the Labour landslide they’d

Andrew Lambirth

Life enhancing

William Crozier at 80 Flowers, 82 Kingsland Road, E2, until 29 May Agnes Martin Timothy Taylor Gallery, 15 Carlos Place, W1, until 22 May William Crozier is Scottish born, but has lived much abroad, spending his formative years in Paris and Dublin, and later working in Spain and America, though always keeping a foothold in England. His sensibility is broadly European, perhaps influenced by the Scottish predisposition to plangent colour, and his work has an intellectual base and emotional breadth that sits easily in an international context. Step into the East End premises of Flowers and be prepared for a blaze of pure visual excitement and pleasure. The effect of

Michael Tanner

Dying gracefully

La Traviata Royal Opera House, in rep until 24 May; and with cast change 8 July to 17 July This year, when operatic fare in the UK has become sparser and less adventurous than at any time since I remember, it’s no surprise that the old stand-bys should be wheeled out regularly. Top scorer in 2010, without question, has been La Bohème, with productions ranging from the brilliantly resourceful minimalism of The Cock in Kilburn, which has been running nightly since early December, to the elaborate squalors of the Royal Opera’s quarter-century-old production, which improves with every advance into decrepitude; with many other versions in between. Some way behind, no

Alan Powers

Classical peaceniks

The Three Classicists RIBA, until 29 May The Berlin Wall separated two sets of people who shared a history and language. In the same way, architecture has been divided into two groups, Classicists and Modernists, each convinced of their own rightness, and refusing to acknowledge the other’s existence. But suddenly it seems that they are offering each other flowers. The exhibition Three Classicists opened recently with an array of Ionic volutes, Corinthian acanthus and sash windows. For the Royal Institute of British Architects this show would once have been as unthinkable as giving the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture to the Prince of Wales, and two major professional journals, having

Peter Phillips

Speech impediment

The demise of French as a useful way of communicating with the wider world has been one of the features of my years as a travelling musician. I can recall many conversations around Europe, the southern Mediterranean and Russia that would not have taken place 30 years ago if I and the local people had not been able to deploy French, which for both sides was a second language. It was then still possible to have the feeling that it was as valuable to know French as English. This was never quite the case with German or Italian (which I did use in Tripoli); nor Spanish — potentially the most

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Lexical trivialities

A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky Lyric, Hammersmith, until 5 June Counting the Ways Oval House The Lyric theatre in Hammersmith has an eccentric approach to the dearth of writing talent. Unable to find a good playwright, it has commissioned three bad ones to showcase their talentlessness in a single work. One assumes that the three men were jesting when they described their collaborative method as ‘writing scenes on rolls of wallpaper and passing one pen between us’. Or maybe they were being candid. The play is flawed at every level. Narratively, the script is so dense that the drama can never achieve lift-off. Four brothers must meet and

Deborah Ross

Fun with Herzog

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans 18, Nationwide My dears, whatever else you are doing this week you must set aside time to see this film, which is lunatic but also extraordinary and riveting. It’s directed by Werner Herzog and stars Nicolas Cage and if it is of a known genre, it is not a genre known to me. Is it a police procedural? A mystery thriller? A dark comedy? It doesn’t look or sound or behave like any other movie. It’s out on its own, and it’s wild and, if it is messy, it is always exhilaratingly messy. I am no Herzog expert — except on bank

Simon Hoggart

Emotional ties

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. There is so much demand that the past is constantly creeping nearer to the present. The BBC is running an Eighties season in which it celebrates events that seem pretty close to most of us. Soon it’ll be looking back, misty-eyed, on early 2010, distant days when Lady Gaga was top of the ‘hit parade’, Gordon Brown was prime minister and you could get a pint for £3.75. This week they showed Worried about the Boy on BBC2 (Sunday) on the early life of Boy George. This was an intriguing programme; neither an old-fashioned biopic (‘Hey,

Kate Chisholm

Vote of confidence

I might have to eat my hat, having declared not so long ago that BBC 6 Music would not be much missed if it were cut from the schedules. Recent audience figures from Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) have revealed a huge jump in listeners in fewer than three months from just over 600,000 to one million and rising. It’s an astonishing vote of confidence for the station, not to say a convincing majority, won by the ardent campaigning of its DJs and followers, including our own Marcus Berkmann and a cohort of Spectator bloggers. A coalition with Five Extra or even One Extra should not now be necessary. Coincidentally,

Ursula Buchan

Chelsea challenge

As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries. As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries. Theirs is not an especially happy lot. This year’s cold and dry late-April and May with frosts at night have

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Beat This, Adidas

Nike’s World Cup ad is great. Let’s see how Adidas counter with Lionel Messi et al. Note too how even in an ad Ronaldo is an egotistical pillock.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Intermission

Looking south towards Hawick. Quiet times here on account of visiting family. Usual service to resume later in the week. All being well.

Saturday

Roderick Conway-Morris

Caravaggio the confessor

Caravaggio’s paintings were inextricably bound up with his life and provide a virtual narrative of his turbulent development, a story fraught with ambiguities and alternative readings. Caravaggio’s paintings were inextricably bound up with his life and provide a virtual narrative of his turbulent development, a story fraught with ambiguities and alternative readings. This almost confessional aspect of his works, along with the immediacy and extraordinary power of their emotional impact, have surely contributed to his current popularity. His documented career spanned only about 15 years, ending with his lonely death on the seacoast at Porto Ercole on 18 July 1610. He was making a desperate attempt to reach Rome to

Harry Mount

Classic treasure

The Greek and Roman Collections Sculpture Promenade 2010 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 28 January 2011 Virgil was wrong — don’t be afraid of Greeks bearing gifts, particularly if you’re a British regional museum. While our government has cut its grant to the Fitzwilliam by two per cent, Greek zillionaires have stepped admirably into the breach to subsidise the renovation of Cambridge’s heart-stopping Greek and Roman gallery, untouched since the Sixties. The Greek Ministry of Culture has chipped in, too; it may want the Elgin Marbles back but it’s happy to pay for Cambridge’s classical treasures to stay put, even while the Greek economy is on the skids. Its prized euros

John McEwen

Scottish clash

Highlands and Islands: Paintings and Poems Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, W1, until 5 June Pictures are usually exhibited with closed-shop segregation from the other arts, so it is a joy to find the bounds broken by this exuberant celebration of one of the oldest and most beautiful places on earth. The show announces the publication of Highlands and Islands (Eland, £8.99), a poetry anthology (mostly 20th-century, not all by Scots) from Beccan mac Luigdech of Rum (died 677) to the present, selected and annotated by Mary Miers, the architectural historian and authority on Highland and Island culture. Her family home is on South Uist, so she brings a native

Michael Tanner

Elegant evening

Juan Diego Flórez Barbican It was an ideal way to spend the evening after Polling Day: a relaxed recital, undemanding and not too long, by one of the most individual of present-day singers. At the same time there was an element of risk: Juan Diego Flórez, the young Peruvian who created a stir singing the comparatively small role of Rodrigo in Rossini’s Otello at Covent Garden, and has since achieved enormous popularity there in bel canto roles, performed a series of songs and arias from the 18th and 19th centuries, with only one solo from his accompanist Vincenzo Scalera. The risk was in exposing the limitations of his voice and

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Harmless fun

Dirty White Boy: Tales of Soho Trafalgar Studio 2, until 22 May Holding the Man Trafalgar Studio 1, until 3 July Blogs and blogging, bloggers and bloggery. What’s it all about? At first sight blogomania looks like an entirely new literary form. A second glance reveals that it’s the oldest genre of the lot: oral history. A few years back, Clayton Littlewood opened a menswear shop in Soho and when business was slow he amused himself by writing an internet journal about the loafers and oddballs who popped in for a cigarette and a moan. Blog became book. Book became play. The material is rather like the novelty jockstraps Littlewood