The question of who is going to buy EMI Classics took up most of 2012 and seems destined to run well into the new year. Given that the catalogue in question is probably the most extensive ever put together, containing priceless recordings from the earliest days of so many great artists that it would be
The National Gallery is limiting itself to two major shows a year in the Sainsbury Wing. The spring exhibition is Barocci: Brilliance and Grace (27 February to 19 May), the first major showing of Federico Barocci (1535–1612), who managed to fuse Venetian colour with the sense of drawing and pictorial design favoured in Central Italy.
Pontius Pilate is deciding the fate of Ha-Notsri (aka Jesus) in Herod’s palace. In Stalin’s Moscow, meanwhile, the Devil (aka Woland) stalks the streets. One man, the Master (aka Mikhail Bulgakov), can reconcile these opposing cosmic forces. But he is languishing in a mental asylum. Bulgakov’s Manichaean acid trip avant la lettre, The Master and
While most theatres brace themselves for the annual invasion of prancing Nutcrackers and flying snowmen, Sadler’s Wells offers something that is mercifully not as sugary. Never-ending love and magic kisses might be at the core of Matthew Bourne’s long-awaited take on Sleeping Beauty — aptly subtitled ‘ A Gothic Romance’ — but there are also
I wasn’t the only one desperate that Viva Forever! would be a blast. There were hundreds of us eager to leap to our feet and holler through the Spice Girls’ greatest hits as a band of teenage lookalikes led the tribute on stage. Didn’t happen, I’m afraid. The Spice Girls are not in this show.
The Flying Dutchman, Wagner’s first masterpiece, has had a rough passage in the UK over the past few decades. I recall a production at the Royal Opera in the mid-1980s which revealed to me for the first time the possibility that an insensitive director can completely destroy a great work, something which is now commonplace.
I don’t know whose idea it was to put New Year at the beginning of January, but it seems like an odd one. Why not begin each new year on, let’s say, the first of April or May? It might bring at least a dash of new dawn-ishness — a flicker of sunlight, scampering clouds,
You know how television is becoming like the movies, more expansive and more expensive? Well, what if the movies were to meet television halfway, becoming smaller and more routine? The result, I’m sure, would be something like Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s first directorial effort since 1978’s Straight Time. If you ran past this film at speed,
Something strange, very strange is going on. Take two sparky young, very young men, watch them launch their media careers a couple of years ago by creating zany videos and putting them up on YouTube. Witness the impish, imaginative duo going viral, followed by millions across the globe. Note that what they’re famous for are
