I write fresh from a local event with historical roots far into the past — a concert, part of a year’s-worth of events celebrating Cambridge’s first eight centuries, devoted to exploring the university’s long past and rich present of choral singing. I write fresh from a local event with historical roots far into the past
State of Play 12A, Nationwide State of Play is a thriller based on the six-part BBC series shown on television in 2003 and which, I confess, I did not see. Probably, it was because What Not To Wear was on the other side and, I’m sorry, I just wouldn’t have had the confidence to know
‘Do you think that Africa is ever going to be free of these superstitions?’ asked the reporter Sorious Samura in the first of his four-part series, West African Journeys on the BBC World Service (Mondays). ‘Do you think that Africa is ever going to be free of these superstitions?’ asked the reporter Sorious Samura in
The phone rang last night, I picked it up and it was our friend Tania. ‘God, I hate my ****ing husband,’ she said. ‘Oh, Tania, don’t be silly, Jamie’s a sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Oh, shut up, I don’t want to be talking to you, you’re a man. Pass me to your wife, she’ll understand,’ said
After Dido Young Vic Il trovatore Royal Opera House For the third collaboration between ENO and the Young Vic Katie Mitchell and her team ‘direct a new work using multi-media techniques to create a synergy of music, theatre and film, inspired by, and incorporating, the full score of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas’. Fortunately, the performance
It’s not often that a business correspondent looks to a musician for advice on investing in the stock market, but Radio Four’s Peter Day turned up on Handel Week and gave us an unusual take on the great baroque composer. It’s not often that a business correspondent looks to a musician for advice on investing
The Private Life of a Masterpiece (BBC1, Saturday) got an Easter outing about Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’. The Private Life of a Masterpiece (BBC1, Saturday) got an Easter outing about Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’. It was superb, as this series invariably is. Understated yet informative, packed with unpatronising experts, it fascinates from start
It is, at present, almost impossible to open a garden magazine, or the gardening pages of a national newspaper, without coming across an article on how we are all now kitchen gardeners and allotmenteers; the theme is that the uncertain economic conditions have turned us back to our gardens, to grow comestibles and thereby ensure
Parlour Song Almeida Tusk Tusk Royal Court Back in 1995 Jez Butterworth got tagged with the ‘Most Promising Playwright’ beeper and he still hasn’t shaken it off. Butterworth is an excellent second-rate writer, he has a wonderful knack for quirky comic dialogue but he wants to be a Great Artist too. A pity. All a
Someone needs to write a history of vibrato. Clearly this should be Roger Norrington: to judge from his words on Radio Three recently he has given the topic much thought and come up with some historically-based conclusions. I suspect he isn’t going to do it, though, because, like me, he is too busy chiselling out
Tony Manero 18, Key Cities This is a Chilean film of the kind that is probably only showing at an independent cinema quite far from you until last Thursday but that is life, so get over it. Also, the only Easter alternative seemed to be a big action flick starring Vin Diesel whom I have
‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio. ‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness
On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. I don’t want to knock Dave too much because
Constable Portraits: The Painter & His Circle National Portrait Gallery until 14 June Sponsored by British Land The portrait was the dominant form in British painting up to the end of the 18th century, principally because this was what patrons wanted. Landscape painting was really the invention of Richard Wilson (1713–82), who inaugurated this particular
I Capuleti e i Montecchi; Dido and Aeneas; Acis and Galatea Royal Opera House There has been a three-week gap between the opening and closing sets of performances of the latest revival of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal Opera. Smitten by migraine on the first night, I had to leave in
‘Having every best seat in the house’ is how some describe seeing opera live on screen, and recently we’ve had the opportunity of seeing the nuts and bolts backstage, too. It was a bold initiative of English National Opera and Sky Arts to take the cameras behind the scenes on the first night of Jonathan
Kuniyoshi From the Arthur R. Miller Collection Royal Academy, until 7 June Sponsored by Canon The Royal Academy is making something of a reputation for staging exhibitions of Japanese printmakers: the current Kuniyoshi show follows on neatly from Hokusai (1991–2) and Hiroshige (1997) and adds considerably to our understanding of the genre. There hasn’t been
Dido, Queen of Carthage Cottesloe The Overcoat Lyric Hammersmith Simple plays can be the hardest to get right. James Macdonald has made a dogged assault on the earliest work of Christopher Marlowe. The story is lifted wholesale from Virgil. After Troy’s fall Aeneas arrives in Carthage where Dido promptly falls in love with him. When
Die Feen Châtelet, Paris Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth Bloomsbury Theatre Wagner wrote his first opera Die Feen (The Fairies) when he was 19 and 20. It was never staged or performed at all in his lifetime, and first performed in Munich in 1888, Richard Strauss having conducted the rehearsals. It was a big success, but has
The Boat That Rocked 15, Nationwide Now, although it has always been fashionable to take a bit of a pop at Richard Curtis and his ‘feel good’ movies (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, Love Actually) and I’ve been as guilty as anyone — I am just naturally bitchy, I’m afraid — I do think it is