The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Virtue, hide thyself! The Coronation of Poppea opens with a warning and closes with a love duet for a concubine and a psychopath, their union celebrated in sinuous melismas over a blameless passacaglia. First performed in 1643, Monteverdi’s final opera is all about talking dirty and talking tough. Seductions, threats, boasts and betrayals are snapped,
Would musical history have turned out differently if Alexander Glazunov hadn’t been smashed out of his wits when he conducted the first performance of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 in D minor? The best of Glazunov’s own neatly carpentered symphonies hover on the verge of greatness. Perhaps if he hadn’t been such a toper — swigging
In London, I remember the indignation. Surely the Nobel prize should have gone to Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish poet we loved – dissident, charismatic, much translated – not some woman we had barely heard of? I thought Polish poems should resemble films of Wajda, charged with the electricity of war. Szymborska’s poetry held no such
The Telegraph has a nice photo gallery featuring the specimens of the 2015 Dull Men of Great Britain calendar, which our own Dot Wordsworth plans to give her husband for Christmas: ‘I had thought that dull, in reference to people, was a metaphor from dull in the sense of ‘unshiny’. ‘Dieu de batailles!’ as the Constable
Do you know what’s hateful? The snobbery that film fans have to contend with. There’s the ‘it’s only a movie’ snobbery, by which cinema is suitable only for wastrels and dogs. And there’s the ‘if it ain’t Danish and silent, then it ain’t no good’ snobbery. Proponents of both should spend less time blowing conjecture
In the Royal Academy’s courtyard are two large glass cases or vitrines containing model submarines. In one the sea has receded, dried up, and the tin fish are stranded on the cracked mud of the ocean floor. In the other, the elegantly rusted subs are mostly suspended like sharks in an aquarium: a fleet in
Classical music has a few certainties: Götterdämmerung will always be that little bit longer than you remember, it will reliably rain if you pack a Glyndebourne picnic, and if Cecilia Bartoli invites you to a party, you drop everything and go. Which is why I found myself in Paris earlier this week, along with most
First, a bit of background. Conquering Agamemnon slew his daughter, Iphigenia, in return for a fair wind to Troy. This rather miffed his wife, Clytemnestra, who bashed his head in with an axe when he came swaggering home. Her retribution laid a religious duty on their son, Orestes, to avenge his dad by slaying his
Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin to his teenage bride (he refused to consummate it), has a blissful cast. It stars Dakota Fanning, Ms Thompson herself, plus Julie Walters, David Suchet, Greg Wise, James Fox, Derek Jacobi and Robbie Coltrane. So
Now that the conference season is over, we can compare not just the party policies, but their logos too. Last week’s Tory conference taught us the patriotic adaptation of their tree — now draped in the Union Flag — doesn’t work any better than the original green-tree symbol. The old symbol demonstrated Conservative values as
My favourite comment about the Scottish referendum came from the eminent comedian and novelist David Baddiel. ‘What if Yes wins, but due to a typographical error, the prog-rock band gets in and Jon Anderson becomes First Minister?’ You probably had to be there to find this funny, and in this case ‘there’ is the early
Anybody feeling a bit depressed about the shortcomings of humanity could do worse than watch Brian Cox’s new series Human Universe (BBC2, Tuesday) — which, judging from the first episode, is all about how great we are. Early on, Cox was shown hanging out, Attenborough-like, with some gelada baboons in the highlands of Ethiopia. They
‘Did you find it a good read?’ asked Harrriett Gilbert. An incredibly long drawn-out sigh from Mr Paxman. ‘I think it’s really unsatisfactory,’ he at last replied. ‘But Jeremy,’ retorted Professor Beard, ‘I don’t think you’ve read it carefully enough.’ The eminent classicist from Cambridge is not afraid of conflict. She must eat her students
Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight face through. The hero, for a start, decides to call himself Dick Johnson. The piece’s Wild West trappings, long since staled into Hollywood cliché, still seem a strange fit for the operatic stage (it was
We left the Scout hut shortly after dark, to ambush regulars acting as invaders. Later, there was to be a demonstration of the use of a primitive stun grenade, designed dramatically to improve morale in the under-gunned Home Guard. A Dunkirk veteran CSM from Caterham had been driven down in a staff car to show
The Twittersphere never fails to surprise but it’s still hard to believe that last week #WorldBalletDay actually beat #HongKong and #Windows10 in the Twitter popularity stakes, on a day of barricades in the Chinese territory and Microsoft’s announcement of a new operating system. Twitter is a solid barometer of a vast and assertively ‘engaged’ segment
It’s official: Europe’s least visited country is unloved little Liechtenstein. Last year, a mere 60,000 tourists travelled to this absurd Alpine principality. For discerning Spectator readers, this is great news. Liechtenstein is charming, its absurdities are enchanting, and it boasts one of the most stylish (and least crowded) modern art museums in Europe. Nothing spoils
‘If I had to say which was telling the truth about society, a speech by a minister of housing or the actual buildings put up in his time, I should believe the buildings.’ So said Kenneth Clark in his unsurpassed Civilisation. I haven’t listened to any speeches by India’s or Maharashtra state’s ministers of housing,
Those of us who were never destined to be great young poets can probably remember the attempts. I kept my verses from when I was 14 in a pillowcase, which was mercifully put in the wash. Writing poetry is like learning an instrument. You need a disproportionate amount of know-how simply not to sound terrible. But
I can’t wait to watch Tom and Jerry, The Complete Second Volume, on Amazon Prime, to which, as luck would have it, I belong. Obviously I’ve seen the cartoons before – I got them in years ago for my children when they were at an age at which everyone else was looking the hellish ‘In the Night Garden’ –
When people ask why I’m obsessed with the Apollo moon missions, I always want to reply using the same phrase: ‘Because they were out of this world.’ I never do, because it happens to sound like a very bad joke. But it’s the truth. For the first time ever, mankind left its home turf and
On 10 October, the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford will host the first concert in ‘the biggest ever celebration of the life and work of Franz Schubert’. Over three weeks, all 650 songs (or thereabouts) will be performed, most of them in England’s oldest concert hall, the Holywell Music Room just around the corner from the
The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know about them. This is perhaps because they’re usually kept on an upper floor of the Henry Cole Wing, rather off the beaten track for most visitors. This new exhibition gives us the chance to examine
So you’ve just popped down to the supermarket for the weekly shop, toddlers in tow, when the grenades start to fly, the air lights up with tracer bullets and you realise to your horror that unless you find a suitable hiding place in a matter of seconds these are the last moments you’ll spend with
What can the Royal Opera House be insinuating about its target audience? No sooner had Anna Nicole closed than Manon opened the new ballet season. Kenneth MacMillan’s gold-digger turns 40 this year but her promiscuous allure shows no signs of failing punters with money to burn on sex thrills. I once took my partner to
The death of Christopher Hogwood has deprived the world of the most successful exponent of early music there has ever been, or is ever likely to be. It has also reduced by one the quartet of conductors who have been called ‘the Class of ’73’, a term coined by Nick Wilson in a recent study
I had a fair idea of what I was in for when I went to see The Fall at Brixton’s Electric last Friday. They’re a middle-aged band from Manchester, just like the Stone Roses, or the various incarnations of New Order. In journalese, this almost makes them ‘Heritage Rock’. I can’t remember when people started
Gone Girl is David Fincher’s adaptation of the bestselling thriller by Gillian Flynn, a relentless page-turner which I’ve heard people say they read ‘even though it’s not that good’ — you were hooked; get over it; don’t be snotty — and which I read, even though it’s not that good. The twists and turns are
Tim and Andy are back. Their monster hit Evita opens the fully refurbed and re-primped Dominion Theatre, which is built on the scale of an airport terminal and needs a big production to fill it. This is a beautiful version of a show that marks a decline in the Tim and Andy alliance. It hasn’t