Arts and culture
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‘I Love a Piano’ sang Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, courtesy of Irving Berlin, in Easter Parade. So do most…
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It was at a Ball at the Trocadero in August 1955, sixty years ago this month, that I first heard…
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It is an out and out masterpiece so any new production of The Marriage of Figaro matters a great deal.…
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It’s the play with no name, literally. Chekhov’s first play, written in 1878, was never completed despite its estimated five…
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It was a sparkling winter morning when the Art Gallery of NSW revealed the 47 finalists for the Archibald Prize…
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My 18-year old consultant can’t understand why I haven’t written a column about games – video and computer games, that…
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They’re just recovering in Adelaide from the sold-out success of the Cabaret Festival which was directed by the wonderful, endlessly…
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This is a very operatic time in Sydney; the SSO has just done Tristan & Isolde, OA has opened it’s…
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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…
