The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Listing page content here My sister and I never had pets as children, or rather we had them but they didn’t tend to last very long. Indeed, no sooner had some dumb animal entered the house than my mother seemed to be making plans to get rid of it. The raven itself was hoarse that
Listing page content here There can’t be many more tantalising prospects for an operatic composer than writing an opera about the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 and then conducting performances of it there. That is what Stephen Barlow has pulled off, the première and two subsequent performances taking place at the
Listing page content here Good and evil slug it out in Paradise Lost. Good triumphs, just about. So, too, in the Oxford Stage Company’s version of Milton’s epic, where flashes of brilliance overcome a few choppy patches. The staging is simple and sometimes powerful but the costumes are a poor blend of mediaeval pastiche and
Listing page content here Although I don’t buy it often, I’ve always liked the New Yorker magazine, not only for its good writing but also for the humour. The cartoons are consistently sharp and amusing and the owners have cleverly marketed them as greeting cards, as The Spectator did recently. The magazine has somehow survived
I greatly enjoyed The Impressionists (BBC1, Sunday) in spite of clunky lines such as ‘This is Paris, in 1862,’ and ‘Cézanne! Do you know everybody?’ There are the scenes where they are painting their actual paintings, when Rolf Harris seems to have been parachuted into an episode of ’Allo, ’Allo! There was an unconsciously funny
I am in Raleigh, North Carolina, unexpectedly invited here by my old friend Grant Llewellyn, who is in his first season as music director of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and enjoying both the challenge and the celebrity status it gives him in the university- and technology-rich region known as The Triangle. Llewellyn has been
The pre-eminent Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) is frequently called an artists’ artist, which is usually taken to indicate that his extreme formality or painterliness (depending on who is arguing the case) appeals more to those in the know than to the man in the street. Morandi undoubtedly does have a deep and lasting
A model couple, Alain and Bénédicte, live a perfect life in a clean white suburban house. A model couple, Alain (Laurent Lucas) and Bénédicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg), live a perfect life in a clean white suburban house. Alain is an engineer who is developing a way of protecting the home by remote control, using a minute
On 5 August 1993 Sviatoslav Richter wrote in his notebook, after listening to a recording of Götterdämmerung (the Rome Radio recording under Furtwängler, made in 1953): ‘What can you say about this music? You can only throw yourself on your knees and offer up your thanks. For me, personally, this is the supreme masterpiece.’ An
The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer’s 1964 play about the conquest of the Incas The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer’s 1964 play about the conquest of the Incas, contains one of the most famous stage directions in modern drama: ‘They cross the Andes.’ On the face of it, these four words
Pointillisme — impressionism by numbers Pointillisme — impressionism by numbers: stand back, let the dots join up all by themselves, and the image judders into focus whatever the subject or lack of. In a month of volatile mobility I can offer no more than a stipple of blobs, musical moments snatched at or accidentally impinging,
The slot at the end of The Westminster Hour on Sunday evenings (repeated Wednesdays) is rarely dull and often quite informative. The last two maintained the consistency — the first, ‘The Gentleman Usher’, had an interview with a former Black Rod, Sir Edward Jones, explaining the nature of his work; and last Sunday’s, ‘The Lloyd
This year’s most compulsive television viewing came on BBC News 24 last week, when they interviewed the wrong man. They were doing a story about the legal battle over registered trademarks between the computer company Apple and the Beatles’ record label, Apple Corps. They intended to speak to an acclaimed information technology expert, Guy Kewney,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Read in the name of your Lord Who created. Read and your Lord is Most Honourable, who taught to write with the pen, taught man what he knew not. Two texts from the Middle East, St John’s Gospel
All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line. All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line. If the British Museum gave in and sent the Elgin Marbles air freight to Athens, a massive
Lately I have adopted Word from Wormingford by Ronald Blythe as a bedside book. Composed of weekly bulletins from a Suffolk village, it combines observations on the countryside with reports on the spiritual welfare of Blythe’s parish. In its gentleness and generosity, it is the perfect antidote to the strain of London life, and cools
Visitors to the once devastated but now completely reconstructed and rather charming little town of Ypres will find themselves bowing the head to 54,896 dead soldiers of the Salient, as the front-line arc became known. These men fought for our freedom but have no graves. Their names are inscribed on the inside walls of the
The restaurant at Tate Britain is famous for two things — its wine list and its mural. The restaurant at Tate Britain is famous for two things — its wine list and its mural. Hamish Anderson, compiler of the former, began with the advantage of a famous cellar; Rex Whistler, creator of the latter, began
Tate Liverpool is the first venue for a memorial exhibition of the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (born Vienna 1906, died London 1996). Motesiczky was from a wealthy and cultivated Jewish background. She was a friend (from 1920) and pupil of Max Beckmann in Frankfurt (1927–8). She left Austria in 1938, settling in London, where she
Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac may not be a masterpiece, though I would claim that it is a first-rate second-rate work, to use a handy taxonomy of Richard Strauss. Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac may not be a masterpiece, though I would claim that it is a first-rate second-rate work, to use a handy taxonomy
There is no doubt that BareBones’ The 5 Man Show will stay vividly in the memory of any dance-goer There is no doubt that BareBones’ The 5 Man Show will stay vividly in the memory of any dance-goer — and for a long time, too. This fizzy, moving, hilarious, corrosive triple bill is an ideal
So it’s here at last, the big hitter: The Da Vinci Code. So it’s here at last, the big hitter: The Da Vinci Code. Ron Howard (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13) directing, Tom Hanks (you know the one) starring, Akiva Goldsman (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Batman and Robin) adapting the book by
When he wrote Enemies, Gorky was in love. The object of his desire was the artistry of Chekhov and this 1906 play is his attempt to emulate the master’s theatrical style. Copying from geniuses is risky. Any attempt is doomed, so it’s remarkable that Gorky fails so successfully. He reproduces Chekhov’s entire theatrical caboodle, the
I went to train in Manchester a year or so after the Moors murders, and they continued to hang over the city like an old-fashioned smog, sickening and inescapable. Reporters who had covered the trial in Chester and heard the tape of Lesley Ann Downey pleading for mercy and begging for her mother said that
Although writing a biography of John Osborne can’t be the most difficult task as Osborne left voluminous and laceratingly honest diaries Although writing a biography of John Osborne can’t be the most difficult task as Osborne left voluminous and laceratingly honest diaries, as well as the two volumes of autobiography, I thought John Heilpern’s new
Listing page content here Here are more than 300 works in yet another mammoth exhibition at Tate Modern. Perhaps the sheer size of it puts people off, though many of those I have spoken to on my travels through the art world hardly knew the show was on. Perhaps the Bauhaus tag puts people off,
Listing page content here Completism has become a maddening obsession these days with the BBC’s Radio Three. Every crotchet of Beethoven given in a week, every demisemiquaver of Webern encompassed within hours, two weeks of wall-to-wall Bach before Christmas, and, most recently, Wagner’s Ring spun into a single day. What’s wrong is that good music
Listing page content here It’s a great relief to see Scottish Opera back on stage again, even if their season consists of only a handful of performances of a couple of operas. I hadn’t realised how sentimental I was until I found my eyes brimming with tears at being in the dress circle of Glasgow’s
Listing page content here At the matinée performance of Donkeys’ Years I attended, Michael Frayn was seated in the row behind me. Seeing this revival of a sex farce he wrote in 1977 must have been an odd experience for him, not least because he more or less single-handedly killed off the genre with Noises