There was an unexpected outbreak of common sense at Chelsea Flower Show this year. I looked hard for the usual silliness to laugh at, but I was hard-pressed to find much. (There were the celebrities who clutter up the place on Press Day, obviously, but the general public who visit Chelsea are mercifully spared those.)
Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is proving to be one of the enduring operas of the 20th century, despite its inconvenient length, or brevity, and thus the problem of what to pair it with for a full evening. I have always tended to think of it as a work of extreme orchestral sumptuousness, which provides a
Listing page content here Surrealism is in the air, what with the Hayward and Max Ernst shows (reviewed in these pages last week), and it’s been lurking around in a different guise since April in an enthralling show at the Whitechapel which focuses on Outsider Art. Outsider Art, or Art Brut as Dubuffet originally termed
Listing page content here You learn something every day, so the saying goes, though these days it rarely happens in a gallery. But at the Fine Art Society next week, ignorant visitors will learn that curassows, guans and chachalacas are not
Listing page content here Fidelio, Beethoven’s simple and sublime opera, presupposes a belief in a set of values and their connection with action which it is hard for most of us to accept, possibly even to take seriously. Yet a great performance of Fidelio is inspiring enough to make you reconsider your scepticism, and that
Listing page content here This column is in disgrace. Last month, with both the deadline and a flight to New York looming, I found myself in the position of the rabbit staring at the headlights of the oncoming lorry. Completely frozen, unable to think, unable to write. I’d been listening to loads of music all
Listing page content here As I’m sure you are aware, United Airlines’ Flight 93 was the fourth plane hijacked on 9/11 — the one that did not reach its target. I shall ignore the internet-based argument over what happened to United 93 in its final minutes (did it crash into the ground or explode in
Listing page content here Killing time in Beverley Minster the other day I caught sight of the list of past organists painted up on a board. Within the past 200 years this magnificent building, which has no choir-school of its own, has played host to John Camidge, A.H. Mann and H.K. Andrews. All three went
Listing page content here In my first report (13 May) from the front line of the RSC’s Complete Works festival, I praised a visiting German company’s take on Othello, making unfavourable comparison between its radical daring and the RSC’s own often disappointing response to the big S in its title. If that was an unkind
Listing page content here Janacek’s The Makropulos Case remains a bewildering work, as in fact almost all his operas after Jenufa, and with the exception of The Cunning Little Vixen, are. Capek’s play from which Janacek made his libretto is called a comedy, but the opera, though it has a few jokes, is mainly a
Listing page content here It is hard to embrace Max Reger. For a start, he is surely the physically ugliest of all composers, surpassing even Prokofiev, or Zemlinsky, whose repulsiveness actually inspired an opera libretto. Reger’s slobbish face, plus pince-nez and thick sulky lips, already anticipates the music’s mix of shortsighted with greedy grossness. Still
Listing page content here I can’t make up my mind about Shared Experience. Since 1988, this company has been adapting classic works of literature, transforming some of the greatest books in the Western canon into visceral pieces of physical theatre. The results are distinctly mixed. On the one hand, the plays are rarely more than
Staging the 1890 classic The Sleeping Beauty in the 21st century is not an easy task. Recent studies, discoveries and even philological reconstructions have heightened historical and stylistic awareness among dance-goers, thus generating expectations that cannot be easily overlooked. Yet philology and historical accuracy alone turn any work into a dead museum exhibit, at the
Listening to The Archive Hour: Down Your Way Revisited on Radio Four (Saturday) made me wonder why the network got rid of the programme in 1995. It had been running since 1946, with a simple formula of interviews and music, the idea of a producer called Leslie Perowne. It visited towns and villages across the
‘Picasso, Miró, Masson and the vision of Georges Bataille’ is the subtitle of the latest extravaganza at the Hayward Gallery. Georges Bataille (1897–1962) is one of those buzz figures, beloved of the moment, without a quote from whom no contemporary art-speak catalogue introduction is complete. He has been influential as a philosopher as well as
This year is Opera Holland Park’s tenth anniversary season, and to my great shame I have never attended a performance, despite having had the best intentions of doing so for roughly the past ten years. If I don’t turn up this summer, I get the feeling I’ll be in serious trouble with the two men
The X-Men trilogy has been a superior translation of comic book to big screen (although I wouldn’t bet money on this being truly ‘The Last Stand’; probably more like ‘The Second Last Stand’, given its ambiguous closing shot). Part of its charm has been the willingness of the writers to handle the metaphor of the
In 1990 I published a lengthy article on Sicily — and was astonished by the response from English readers who had connections with the island, in some cases going back 200 years and more. All, with one exception, were nostalgic. The exception was an evidently elderly Englishman who was born in Sicily, but never returned
Here in London are two historical exhibitions which treat more of human identity, national and individual, than they do of pure painting. Each one showcases art, but in the wider context of the artefacts of a particular period. For a nation which loves to visit country houses (courtesy of that great institution, the National Trust),
Listing page content here The war on terror means little to a lot of people, but to the itinerant musician at an airport it means ever-increasing hassle, rough treatment and delay. In case you didn’t know, the Americans have just invented a new queue the traveller must stand in: in addition to being photographed and