Arts
Keeping it in the family
A new orthodoxy governs the casting process in Hollywood. An actor’s ethnicity must match the character’s. If you extend this…
Anne-Sophie Mutter
These are good times for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Chief Conductor Davis Robertson announced a glamorous 2018 Season. The Board…
Silent films
On 15 September 1888 Vincent van Gogh was intrigued to read an account of an up-to-date artist’s house in the…
Viennese whirl
‘First performance: Vienna, October 3, 1880’ declares the programme for Opera della Luna’s new production of Johann Strauss’s The Queen’s…
Marion Hall Best in Marimekko, 1968
Her shop was one of the glories of Rowe Street, itself one of the glories of old Sydney, before it…
Moral maze
Una is a psychological drama about a woman who was abused by a man when she was 12, and who…
Snap, crackle and op
Stand in front of ‘Fall’, a painting by Bridget Riley from 1963, and the world begins to quiver and dissolve.…
Straight to hell
No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…
Animal or vegetable?
Against by Christopher Shinn sets out to unlock the secrets of America’s spiritual malaise. Two main settings represent the wealthy…
‘Smile, segue and shut up’
Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and…
Moor and more
In 1824 an ambitious teenage actor fled to England from his native New York where he had been beaten up…
Mistaken identity
This year’s Lucerne Festival is given its identity by having as its theme ‘Identity’. Since the word doesn’t mean anything,…
Twin peaks
Schoenberg began Gurrelieder in 1900, but he didn’t hear it until 1913. By then, he’d moved on, and he ostentatiously…
Arcade Fire: Everything Now
Grade: D+ Well, this is truly awful. Perhaps the worst album by a major band since Mardi Gras by Creedence…
Universal appeal
Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV,…
Hamlet Glyndebourne Festival
Shakespeare’s plays have frequently been the source of operas. Almost as frequently the operas have been only modest successes. Notable…
What lies beneath
Last year, Gary Hume made a painting of himself paddling. At a casual glance, or even a longer look, it…
Losing the plot
Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky is a heist caper that, to be fair, does what it says on the can. There…
For goodness’ sake
Most new Netflix series are greeted not merely with acclaim, but with a level of gratitude that the returning Christ…
Sir Andrew Davis
Operas are subject to changes in fashion, suffering long periods of neglect. One such opera is Thaïs by Jules Massenet.…
Wilson’s sparkle and snap
Back in the period-instrument wars of the 1980s and ’90s, when the forces of historically informed performance smashed out of…
Not vintage Mariinsky
Not really a vintage Mariinsky season — an odd choice of repertoire and some hit-and-miss male casting — but the…
The many sides of satire
Brexit the Musical is a peppy satire written by Chris Bryant (not the MP, he’s a lawyer). Musically the show…
Whatever happened to Alice?
In 1987, the art of opera changed decisively. John Adams’s opera Nixon in China was so unlike the usual run…
Nothing is quite what it seems
One day, somebody will stage an exhibition of artists taught at the Slade by the formidable Henry Tonks, who considered…
