The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Matilde di Shabran Royal Opera House Aida English National Opera Iolanta Royal Festival Hall Matilde di Shabran is one of Rossini’s least performed operas, and having seen the Royal Opera’s production, which derives from the Pesaro festival of 2004, I understand why. Broadly speaking, it is a comedy without jokes or other humour, and in
Every new biographer of Shakespeare walks splat into the same old problem. What to say? Since he can’t tell us anything we don’t know, he must either tell us things we do know or things we don’t need to know. Jonathan Bate’s ingot-heavy volume announces, in its lackadaisical title, an intention to take all possible
Masters and Commanders, by Andrew Roberts; Behind Closed Doors, by Laurence Rees Andrew Roberts is one of the liveliest as well as the most considerable of contemporary historians. He is hard-working and exceptionally well-informed, lucid, highly intelligent, pugnacious, occasionally perverse (though much less often than he used to be), combining an impressive grasp of the
The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike The Witches of Eastwick was published in 1984; it was a retrospective cele- bration of the new sexual liberties and powers available to women in the 1960s. The book aroused interest both by its unexpected boldness of design and by its frankness and it became a successful movie.
Craven House, by Patrick Hamilton Patrick Hamilton (d. 1962) was a supremely odd fish, a kind of case-study in psychological extremism who drank himself to death at the early age of 58. His later novels, written when the drink was cracking him up, offer the curious spectacle of a mind that has travelled too far
Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, by Richard Dowden Out of Africa always something new in armchair solutions, with the eternal certainty that none will work. Colonialism? Bad. Decolonisation? Disastrous. Neo-colonialism? Wicked. Bob Geldof? Er, no. So, leave the place alone and its bonjour Mugabe, or worse. For well-wishers from the north it has been a
A Whispered Name, by William Brodrick This is the third of William Brodrick’s sensitively wrought novels featuring his contemplative monk, Anselm, an attractive and credible Every- man who has occasionally to leave his monastery to investigate ambiguous problems of evil, forgiveness and, in this case, sacrifice. Brodrick’s hero is aptly named since Saint Anselm, an
More jobs Americans won’t do: write their own novels. Mind you, I wrote this post, so I’m in no position to carp or quibble. Still, this is ingenious: Admit it. Certain things make you desperately unhappy, and you don’t know why–the Sbarro at the mall, the taste of Jolly Ranchers in winter, the woman in
Reviewing Thomas Frank’s new book The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, last week, Michael Lind wrote: But “The Wrecking Crew” is a polemic, not a dissertation. With rare exceptions like John Kenneth Galbraith, conservatives — from Juvenal and Alexander Pope to H. L. Mencken, Tom Wolfe and P. J. O’Rourke — have been the best
Martin Gayford considers whether we are in the final, pre-popping stages of an art bubble Journalists arriving for the press view of Renaissance Faces at the National Gallery last week were greeted by placards. Why, the slogans asked — you might think reasonably enough — could that institution not pay its staff a little more,
The Irish government has spent €27 million on a stunning new opera house in Wexford, which is having a flawless and crisis-free baptism in the current opera festival there. The old Theatre Royal was knocked down in November 2005, and the money the festival managed to raise was just €6 million of the €33 million
Mariinsky Ballet Sadler’s Wells Tiago Guedes: Various Materials The Place: Robin Howard Dance Theatre I know I am not alone in thinking that an all-Forsythe programme was not an ideal choice for the Mariinsky Ballet’s opening night in London. As the man who dared successfully to manipulate ballet’s centuries’ old principles, William Forsythe is regarded
Further thoughts on the ever renewed quest for the perfect acoustic for performance and audition of music. Over the past five months I’ve heard one of my string quartets given five of its six première performances in exceedingly diverse and discrepant venues, so much so as (sometimes) to make almost a different piece of it.
Ghost Town 12A, Nationwide Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais in his first leading Hollywood role, and how much you like this film will probably depend on how much you like Gervais — what? You expected him to turn in a Daniel Day-Lewis-type performance? — and how much Gervais you can take at one sitting; the
Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV, Saturday); Hole in the Wall (BBC1, Saturday); Saturday Night Live (NBC); The Sarah Silverman Program (Paramount, Monday and Tuesday); Desperate Housewives (Channel 4, Wednesday) I don’t want to come over as obsessive, but I was delighted to see the return of Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV, Saturday). This show, which
It happened just before the eight o’clock pips on Radio Two on Good Morning Sunday. One of those rare moments when something clicks on air and you’re suddenly so connected to what’s being said that you feel you’re in a private conversation. It’s just you and the voice on the other side of the microphone
In times of anxiety, I always turn to Jane Austen’s novels for tranquil distraction. Not that Jane was unfamiliar with financial crises and banking failures. On the contrary: she knew all about them from personal experience. As a young girl she seems to have regarded bankers as rather glamorous figures. In Lady Susan, written when
We’ve just uploaded Lloyd Evans’s Web Exclusive report on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared event – Howard Jacobsen discussing his novel ‘The Act of Love’ with Peter Florence. You can read it here.
The Burial at Thebes The Globe Walton double bill Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House What is our best chance of experiencing Greek tragedies as works that are alive and life-giving, as we can sometimes experience Shakespeare? I’m taking it that we don’t understand Greek, but there are major problems even for those who do. Seamus
Oedipus Olivier La Clique Hippodrome Here it is. The National’s autumn blockbuster, Oedipus. Of all the plays of classical antiquity this is the best, the most accessible, the least tedious, and Jonathan Kent’s impressive production allows the beautiful and awful symmetry of the storyline to work its magic. Yet Kent and his designer Paul Brown
Love’s Labour’s Lost Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon In Love’s Labour’s Lost Shakespeare uses the most transparent of silly plots as a pretext for pyrotechnics with the raw material of his craft. On a sudden whim, a king and three courtiers dedicate themselves to scholarship and celibacy. A princess and her companions arrive and duly scupper this
Who’d be a car dealer now? With new sales 20 per cent down and dropping, manufacturers moving to four-day weeks, dealerships closing and the used-car market awash with unsold vehicles, they must feel like turkeys being sized up for Christmas. And that’s before anyone has felt next year’s swingeing road-tax increases on post-2001 mid-sized vehicles
It’s possible that my life would have been quite different if I hadn’t met the literary agent Jacintha Alexander at a party in 1985. At the time I was an impoverished researcher and aspirant writer, with a specialism in 20th-century British art. As we chatted of this and that, it emerged that Jacintha had a
Jack B. Yeats & Oskar Kokoschka Compton Verney, until 14 December In 1962 Oskar Kokoschka drew record crowds to his Tate retrospective — belated recognition for the Austrian-born artist who had lived in London, on and off, since 1938. Herbert Read blamed the long delay on Kokoschka’s ‘un-Englishness’, so it’s ironic that his latest comeback
One day, perhaps sooner rather than later, it may be possible to draw a telling analogy between the practices of the world financial markets which propelled the global economy to the brink of recession and those which prompted the phenomenal rise of the international contemporary art market. After all, so many of the players are
Correggio and the Antique National Gallery and other locations in Parma, until 25 January 2009 Unlike the other leading artists of the Italian High Renaissance — Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian — Correggio lived a life of provincial obscurity. Unable to find any likeness of him, Vasari was obliged in his Lives of the Artists to
Anthony Caro’s Chapel of Light Church of St-Jean-Baptiste, Bourbourg The Barbarians and Clay works Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, until 23 February 2009 Paper works and Table sculptures Musée de Gravelines, until 21 February 2009 Steel sculptures Lieu d’Art et d’Action Contemporaine, Dunkirk, until 21 February 2009 There was once a small town called Vence, just
Gabriel García Márquez, by Gerald Martin In July 1965, or so the story goes, a Colombian writer in early middle age, living in Mexico City, decided to take his wife and two young sons on a short and much needed holiday to Acapulco. He had had some small successes, and was respected in the small
There is a startling passage in this book. It recounts an intimate moment (among many, it should be said) between the President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his Secretary of State and long-time adviser, Condoleezza Rice. They are sitting on the porch of Bush’s Texas ranch. It is December 2006 and, after