19th century
Cristina, Regina di Svezia, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan HallSunday, 09 November 2014
One queen is much like another in so-called “historical” Italian early to mid 19th-century opera. Elizabeth of England, Christina of Sweden, take your pick, they all fall for a tenor courtier who loves Another (the seconda donna, soprano or mezzo).... Read more... |
The Cunning Peasant, Guildhall SchoolThursday, 06 November 2014
Dvořák’s rustic operetta sits, swinging its legs rather diffidently, historically somewhere between the neverland Bohemia of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and the lacerating reality of village life in Janáček'’s Jenůfa. The Cunning Peasant’s charms... Read more... |
La Bohème, English National OperaThursday, 30 October 2014
ENO may not always have matched the Royal Opera in the Great Puccini Voices stakes. But it's served up many of the classiest Mimìs, with Valerie Masterson, Mary Plazas and Elizabeth Llewellyn as top seamstresses. Californian former beauty queen... Read more... |
Anarchy and Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, National Portrait GalleryTuesday, 28 October 2014
Can you sense a person's life through a sequence of objects? Not to mention influence and legacy? Biographical exhibitions are fascinating, not least because they also tell us something about looking back through the filter of the present. And... Read more... |
The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour, BBC FourMonday, 27 October 2014
Andrew Graham-Dixon’s villainous alter ego got a second airing tonight in his exploration of 19th-century Britain’s love of all things Gothic. Last week we saw him hanging about in decaying graveyards, or appearing, wraithlike in a dank corner of a... Read more... |
Witches and Wicked Bodies, British MuseumTuesday, 21 October 2014
Wicked women have always sold well, but more than that, they have fired the artistic imagination in a quite exceptional way. Exploring the depiction of the witch from the 15th to the 19th century, this exhibition is packed with images that must... Read more... |
The House That Will Not Stand, Tricycle TheatreTuesday, 21 October 2014
Bigger is better in the Tricycle’s latest piece of reclaimed black history. African-American writer Marcus Gardley’s stimulating play, which transports Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba to 1836 New Orleans and a significant shift in the evolving... Read more... |
The Cherry Orchard, Young VicFriday, 17 October 2014
Ghosts are walking at the Young Vic. Katie Mitchell’s stark, startling production of Chekhov’s final lament is not just an evocation of a lost era, but a summoning of the spirits haunting Vicki Mortimer’s chilling sepulchral mansion. This is a... Read more... |
City of London Sinfonia, Layton, Southwark CathedralThursday, 09 October 2014
Stratford-upon-Avon calling. The City of London Sinfonia has embarked on a series of three Bard-based October concerts in London to commemorate the 450th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death. The first of the three stopping-off points last night... Read more... |
Otello, English National OperaSunday, 14 September 2014
From one great operatic storm to another. 2014 opened at English National Opera with David Alden’s Peter Grimes, gale-tossed and wet with sea-spray, and now the director turns his attention to Verdi’s Otello. Restlessly urgent, Edward Gardner’s... Read more... |
Prom 75: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, GilbertSaturday, 13 September 2014
The silliness of the Last Night is really just a postscript to the penultimate night of the Proms, traditionally given over to a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was a tradition restored yesterday evening when Alan Gilbert and the... Read more... |
The Hundred-Foot JourneyFriday, 05 September 2014
Imagine The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel crossed with Chocolat. That’s The Hundred-Foot Journey in one, meshing a previous success of director Lasse Hallström with the previously neglected but growing genre of 'the mature person's movie'. After all,... Read more... |
