Culture Buff
This is a very operatic time in Sydney; the SSO has just done Tristan & Isolde, OA has opened it’s…
Culture Buff
Surely the most luxuriously sensual of all operas, Tristan & Isolde makes voyeurs of us all. This opera is being…
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Bill Dobell is back in town. At least an aspect of his output, titled Painter in Paradise: William Dobell in…
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Another announcement: more cultural infrastructure to dramatically increase the exhibition space at the Art Gallery of NSW. The architects are…
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Forty years ago I predicted an imminent Mendelsshon revival; I’m still waiting. This month brought a false dawn; at the…
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The Laird’s House at Skara Brae on Orkney overlooks the Neolithic settlement, uncovered in a huge storm in 1850. Predating…
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Elijah Moshinsky is back in town, in Melbourne, where it all began. Responsible for the most insightful and beautiful productions…
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By any measure it was a glamorous auction. The auctioneer was Mark Politmore, aka 7th Baron Poltimore, Deputy Chairman of…
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Sensible birds fly to the warmth in the winter. Humans, not being birds and not always sensible, have to make…
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The garbage bins from MTC’s production of Endgame are being packed away at the Southbank Theatre to make room for…
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A baroque music festival in Hobart sounded right with particularly appropriate settings such as the Theatre Royal and the pretty…
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Writers’ Festivals may well be taking over the world. Worse things could happen but their expanding scale and level of…
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The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn was greatly loved by our generation and several before us. It is derived from…
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We’re all keen on infrastructure at the moment so it’s worth remembering what an astounding impact the Suez Canal made…
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In her memoir Must You Go?, Antonia Fraser records an exchange between her husband Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett in…
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Nowadays we don’t often look to modern Greece for inspiration except for its physical beauty and the charm of its…
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So familiar, Miriam Margolyes seems like one of us. Well, she is actually, because she took out Oz citizenship and…
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Adelaide is the perfect festival city and its once biennial, now annual, Festival has been the pace setter for others…
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He gave himself the name ‘Tennessee’; a creative and public relations masterstroke for a still unknown 28 year-old writer. Born…
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Readers already know from this column something of the forthcoming Perth International Festival (13 Feb-7 Mar) with its huge Journey…
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Possibly in the most beautiful setting of any theatre in the world, Sydney’s Wharf Theatre saw its first performances 30…
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This is a great time of the year to make progress with that stack of unread books. One of my…
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Wanting to love it was not enough; Mr Turner just didn’t quite do it for me. Mike Leigh’s new film…
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Not many people would still argue that fashion, as in garments, has no place in an art museum. After all,…
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I’m a bit perplexed about a current Christmas (perhaps I should say Xmas) craze. This is not a moan from…
