Arts Council
A keeper: ENO’s new The Elixir of Love reviewed
There was some light booing on the first night of English National Opera’s The Elixir of Love, but it was…
Across Britain punters are lapping up ultra-trad opera – the Arts Council will be disgusted
Another week at the opera, another evening with an elitist and ethically dubious art form. I love it; you love…
In defence of the Arts Council
I once knew a monster who said she could not read Proust because there were no figures in Proust with…
Why the Arts Council should kill off ENO and ENB
It is high time the Arts Council put ENO and ENB out of their misery, says Rupert Christiansen
Could the Arts Council pay Americans to keep this stuff in America? Daddy and The Fever Syndrome reviewed
The Fever Syndrome is a dramatised lecture set in a New York brownstone occupied by the super-brainy Myers family. The…
The promoter the critics love to hate: an interview with Raymond Gubbay
Richard Bratby talks to one of Britain’s most successful impresarios about his promoter’s nose, Arts Council spinelessness and ENO madness
Defund theatres – and give the money to gardeners and bingo halls
Why does the state fund theatres and not gardening and bingo, asks Lloyd Evans
Blacktivist rhetoric and impenetrable symbols: Misty reviewed
Arinzé Kene’s play Misty is a collection of rap numbers and skits about a fare dodger, Lucas, from Hackney. Lucas…
The former head of the RSC finds cause for optimism in the Arts Council cuts
He looks like an absent-minded watchmaker, or a homeless chess champion, or a stray physics genius trying to find his…
Director’s cut
Much fuss has been made of the title given to Sir Simon Rattle on arrival at the London Symphony Orchestra.…
ENO must go
Last week Darren Henley, chief executive of Arts Council England, revealed that opera receives just under a fifth of the…
What does it take to have someone declared dead? £480, for a start
Matters of life and death Lord Lucan is now officially presumed dead. How do you have someone declared dead? In…
Gorgeous, visionary sights from Akram Khan at the Roundhouse
How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s…
James McAvoy is wrong – the arts are better off without subsidy
The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without…
You can’t force low-income people to go to an art gallery or the theatre if they don’t want to
I went last week to see the justly praised production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers at English National Opera, and I…
Isn’t it time we asked the National Theatre to support itself?
Isn’t it time we asked the National Theatre to support itself? Lloyd Evans says yes
The quango state: how the left still runs Britain
David Cameron’s government continues to subsidise its critics
