Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Henry Sands

How I was saved from Mongolian torture

My 12-year-old sister shouted, ‘Come and watch this TV programme, you’ll love it. It is all about naked men trying to prove how tough they are.’ She was right, I did like it, so much so that at the end, when applicants were invited to apply for the second series, I filled in the online form immediately. The programme was Last Man Standing and involved six contestants travelling the world to live with tribes for two weeks. At the end of each show they fought members of the tribe using the tribes’ traditional form of combat. They had stick fighting with Zulu warriors in South Africa and wrestling with nomads

Henrietta Bredin

The Wagner effect

Henrietta Bredin has put together a series of events to celebrate the Royal Opera House’s Ring cycle It is with considerable trepidation that I venture to write about Richard Wagner in these pages, considering that in doing so I am following a trail well blazed by Bernard Levin — a passionate and lushly articulate devotee — and that no fewer than three highly eminent Wagner scholars are current contributors: Michael Tanner, Patrick Carnegy and Robin Holloway. However, I shall take my courage in both hands as I am in the final throes of a project I was asked to take on by the Royal Opera House just over a year

Andrew Lambirth

Beguiling mix

Exhibitions: Temptation in Eden: Lucas Cranach’s ‘Adam and Eve’; Work, Rest & Play Amazingly, the Courtauld can claim to have mounted the first exhibition in England devoted to Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1472–1553). He’s not an artist we know at all well here, though one or two images will be familiar from reproduction, probably elegant, elongated and slightly heraldic full-length portraits, or glimmering erotic nudes. There’s something very individual and instantly recognisable about his images, an aura of self-containment which is based on a decorative unity which looks back to Gothic art. This is balanced by the new naturalism of the German Renaissance. Cranach employed landscape elements (in the wake

Michael Kennedy

Fighting Finn

Where does Sibelius stand today? Twenty years ago, the answer would have been not very high. Today, 50 years after his death, I think it would be ‘on the up’ again, especially as we now know not just the symphonies and tone-poems but also the wonderful songs in performances by Karita Mattila, Soile Isokoski, Anne Sofie von Otter and Jorma Hynninen. In Britain during the first half of the 20th century Sibelius was regarded as the symphonic heir to Beethoven. There was no mention of Mahler and Bruckner in those days, except in very restricted circles. It almost seemed as if Sibelius was an honorary Englishman. The composer had first

Marcus Berkmann

Past perfect | 8 September 2007

I see Squeeze have reformed and are touring again. In fact, there don’t seem to be many bands who haven’t reformed and aren’t touring again. Out there on the road: that’s where the cash is. There seems to be a particular process here. 1. Band splits up in a spirit of mutual enmity and recrimination. 2. Principals embark on solo careers of varying success. 3. World forgets about band. 4. Principals, interviewed in rock press, express undying hatred for each other. 5. Accountant has quiet word in ear. 6. Fifty-date world tour is announced. It’s strange to think that, 20 years or so ago, bands toured to promote the record.

Michael Tanner

Misinterpreting Strauss

For its final operatic offering, this year’s Edinburgh Festival presented what it billed as ‘World première of a new production’ of Richard Strauss’s last opera Capriccio. I suppose every new production is a ‘world première’ but they don’t need to say so. Anyway, this turned out to be a dismal affair, part infuriating and part just inadequate, the only redeeming feature being the conducting of Markus Stenz and the playing of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. As soon as anyone mentions this inspired product of Strauss’s old age they seem to need to carry on at length about its relation to the time and place in which it was written, Germany

Peter Phillips

Tale of two cities

Eternal though they may seem, the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival are susceptible to change. Roger Wright will take over the former next year and Jonathan Mills has just assumed responsibility for the latter. New appointments do not necessarily mean that anything more up-to-date will happen, nor that the change will be for the better — the Bath Festival seems to have been all but destroyed by a recent and tactless overdose of innovation; but the signs from the two capitals are encouraging. The Edinburgh Festival has traditionally been hostile to what is still called ‘early music’, the received wisdom being that the people of Scotland would not come to

Deborah Ross

Losing heart

There has been such a lot of fuss and hype around this adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel — as if this is all anybody has ever been waiting for — that I did wonder if I had anything new or useful to say. But then I realised: 1) it’s never stopped me before and 2) it’s never stopped me before and 3) it’s never stopped me before. So, in short, if it’s never stopped me before, why stop now? Shall we proceed, now we’ve decided we are not stopping? Good. What I am saying, I think, is that you will probably have a sense of Atonement already, considering it’s

James Delingpole James Delingpole

General grumble

Sorry, I’m in Sardinia at the moment and I couldn’t find any preview tapes that really grabbed me before I went away so if you don’t mind I thought I’d just have a general grumble about the state of TV. First, Weekend Nazis (BBC1, Monday), whose undercover team made the truly cataclysmic discovery that one or two members of Second Battle Group — a British second world war re-enactment outfit which specialises in portraying German Waffen SS soldiers — may have neo-Nazi sympathies. Well, knock me down with a feather. Perhaps next week this same crack team will manage to infiltrate the Vatican and emerge with the shock horror revelation

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The end of the ‘noddy shot’ is a ray of hope for television

Nobody much likes television, especially not the people who work in it. They think it’s a cretinous medium, a sort of institutionalised con-trick, the cultural equivalent of a McDonald’s Happy Meal — processed excrement which everybody, including the consumer, knows to be dumb and bad for you. I suspect that this has always been true. It wouldn’t surprise me if John Logie Baird was gripped by a feeling of revulsion and self-disgust shortly after transmitting images of his fingers wiggling up and down back in the 1920s, the first ever TV show — and, you have to say, a suitably banal and metaphorically appropriate debut for the medium. Television: a

Friday

The Spectator

What you should do if you can’t see Atonement this weekend

Cinema goers will all be planning to go to see Atonement this weekend: I know I am. But if you are defeated by the queues, which threaten to be of English Patient/Shakespeare in Love proportions, do go and see Knocked Up instead. If ever a film was let down by its title it is this one. Clearly marketed for the audience that loved American Pie and US gross-out comedy, this is actually a very sophisticated film which brilliantly explores the gender gap and uses an old and unremarkable plotline – beautiful woman falls pregnant by unattractive male – as a sturdily reliable framework over which to drape the most delicate

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Luciano Pavarotti, 1935-2007

Opera Chic has all you need to know about Luciano Pavarotti’s death, including a collection of terrific YouTube clips. If only the Washington National Opera’s forthcoming Boheme could feature a voice such as this… But, of course, the point is that it can’t.

Wednesday

The Spectator

The greatest living Englishman

Last night’s GQ Men of the Year Awards were, as ever, a glittering occasion and a tribute to the talents of the magazine’s editor, Dylan Jones (whose most recent Spectator Diary you can read here). Plenty of excellent choices for the 10th annual ceremony, including the editor of the year, Will Lewis, editor in chief of our stable mate Telegraph titles. I finally got to meet Michael Caine, who was given a Lifetime Achievement award and rewarded with a thunderous standing ovation at the Royal Opera House. He is almost certainly the Greatest Living Englishman. Why? Because, in the end, it is more fun to be Harry Palmer, a spy

Saturday

Charles Spencer

All that jazz

I’m just back from Edinburgh, my 20th successive year at the festival for the Daily Telegraph, which makes me feel very old indeed. How times have changed. When I started going, the paper put us up in the luxurious Sheraton Grand and no questions were asked about the size of your bar bill, which in my case was invariably eye-wateringly large. I also remember becoming bored of eating smoked salmon and Aberdeen Angus steak every day and often feeling desperately lonely in my huge, superbly appointed but utterly soulless room. But for at least a decade now Telegraph hacks have been lodged in communal flats, like students, with some of

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Mutual loathing

Dublin. Terrific to write about, terrible to experience. This was the verdict of Patrick Kavanagh, poet, alcoholic and failure, born in 1904 and now brought back to life in Russell Kennedy’s enjoyable show at the Old Red Lion. Kavanagh’s assessment of Dublin would be better applied to himself. He cuts a shambolic, repellent figure in his knackered spectacles, squelching shoes and moths’ nest jumper, as he shuffles about the city’s pubs cadging drinks, lusting after female students and cursing the reputations of greater talents than his own. A particular hatred was aimed at Brendan Behan who ardently requited Kavanagh’s feelings. With the perspective of 50-odd years it’s the similarities between

Kate Chisholm

World class

Next time you’re bemoaning the TV licence fee, check out the BBC’s World Service. Next time you’re bemoaning the TV licence fee, check out the BBC’s World Service. A different quality appears to prevail in their making of radio documentaries — more time spent on research, less on presentation. No tricks, no smoochy music. Just experts sharing with us their enthusiasm and knowledge. Trouble is, you need an advanced degree in electronics and time management to find the station and what’s on when. A lot of fuss was made a fortnight ago when Vladimir Putin put a stop to the FM transmission of the BBC World Service in Moscow, although

Wednesday

Daniel Sparrow

The spirit of Almod

In the theatre programme notes for the new play based on Pedro Almodóvar’s film, All About My Mother, the playwright Samuel Adamson observes that the play’s protagonist, Manuela, is drawn towards the world of theatre by an unexpected event. Back in 1999, although I didn’t know it at the time, my own life was about to imitate Almodóvar’s art. Perhaps calling a simple trip to the cinema ‘an unexpected event’ might itself seem a touch theatrical, but little did I expect that catching a flick on a Friday night in Sydney would spark the beginning of a journey that (not unlike Manuela’s) would draw me to the world of theatre,

Andrew Lambirth

True colours

Exhibition; Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Colour How diminished our lives would be if suddenly we could only see in black and white. ‘Colour is the first revelation of the world,’ exclaimed Hélio Oiticica (1937–80), a Brazilian artist with a mission to liberate colour and help it to embody itself in other guises. He thought of colour as a dimension, like space or time. How far would he have travelled if his tragic early death had not stopped short his career? He had already gone beyond helping colour to escape from the imprisoning rectangle of the picture frame and move into three-dimensions; he had even given it human locomotion and

Simon Hoggart

Shocking cheats

The most egregious example of cheating in wildlife photography was the 1958 Disney film Wild Wilderness. They wanted footage of lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs into the sea — heaven knows why, since lemmings do no such thing. Since the crew were in Alberta, where neither sea nor lemmings can be found, they bought the little creatures in from Manitoba, and filmed them on a giant turntable, so it looked as if there were thousands instead of dozens. Then they chucked them into a river, which slightly resembled the sea, and there they drowned. The makers of wildlife programmes had a more robust attitude to their subjects then. In Bill

Tuesday

The Spectator

What to see this Autumn

If you want to know what’s coming up in the arts this autumn a good place to look is today’s G2, where critics have chosen the ‘50 hottest acts’. The film Atonement, based on Ian McEwan’s novel, with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, opens on 7 September (I’ve seen a preview and loved it). Other recommendations include: the Royal Opera House’s Iphigénie en Tauride (with Simon Keenlyside and Susan Graham); lots of Sibelius in Manchester and London; Millais at Tate Britain and Renaissance Siena at the National Gallery; and Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse at the National Theatre.