Arts
Thomas Hampson
Sir Andrew Davis became Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2013 and, happily, will continue until the end…
iAddicts
For many years The Spectator employed a television reviewer who did not own a colour television. Now they have decided…
No balls
Borg vs McEnroe is a dramatised account of one of the greatest tennis rivalries of all time — between Bjorn…
Mothers’ ruin
At the heart of Basic Instincts, the new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London, is an extraordinarily powerful painting…
Seeing the light
‘You can’t lie… on radio,’ says Liza Tarbuck. The Radio 2 DJ was being interviewed for the network’s birthday portrait,…
Director’s cut
Much fuss has been made of the title given to Sir Simon Rattle on arrival at the London Symphony Orchestra.…
Speech therapy
Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this…
Small wonders
It has been a reasonably good week for peripatetic opera-loving female-underwear fetishists. In La bohème at Covent Garden Musetta slipped…
The sound of no hands clapping
‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic.…
Ave, Maria
Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks…
Nut job
The film-maker Darren Aronofsky says he wrote Mother! in five days as if in a ‘fever dream’ and, as a…
Space odyssey
Rachel Whiteread is an indefatigable explorer of internal space. By turning humble items such as hot-water bottles and sinks inside…
Face time
The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday morning. He was not, though, talking about…
Rockies horror show
Tin Star, the latest Sky Atlantic drama, has a comfortingly familiar premise: Jim Worth (Tim Roth), an ex-detective from London…
Northern rock
A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young British guitar band entered the chart at No. 6. You might…
DIY Bohème
The Royal Opera’s one production that, it has always confidently been claimed, need never be replaced has been replaced. John…
Age concern
Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew…
Vivica Genaux
Founded in 2002, Pinchgut Opera has presented 19 rarely performed works with such distinction that its audience has grown along…
Art of darkness
Stephen King, 69, has sold more than 350 million books, and tries not to apologise for being working-class, or imaginative,…
Bowled over by Bruckner
The two Proms concerts given on consecutive evenings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were well planned: a short opening work,…
The National: Sleep Well Beast
Grade: A– There are plenty of websites where fans try to discern, without any success, what in the name of…
Made in Port Talbot
Port Talbot, on the coast of South Wales, is literally overlooked. Most experience the town while flying over it on…
Male order
The starting point for Taylor Sheridan’s crime-thriller Wind River is explicitly stated at the end when the following words come…
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
Second thoughts
I had planned to review David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s new Channel 4 sitcom Back without constantly referring to their…
