France
Cabell, BBC Concert Orchestra, Lockhart, QEHTuesday, 01 April 2014
Where did all the terrific programming energy of last year’s The Rest is Noise festival go? One answer – surprising given the orchestra’s former Friday night lite status – is into a two-concert adventure by the BBCCO. World to Come, World Once Known... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Calais: Monument, Musée des Beaux-ArtsSunday, 30 March 2014
Were it not for the bombs which rained down on Calais, its current Musée des Beaux-Arts would not exist. The 1966 building was part of a civic reconstruction programme, so it too is a war memorial of sorts. And it's now playing host to an exhibition... Read more... |
Thérèse Raquin, Finborough TheatreSaturday, 29 March 2014
Thérèse Raquin is not a happy sort of production. This musical adaptation of Émile Zola's 1867 novel transports you to the dank darkness of the Passage du Pont Neuf in 19th century Paris, and reveals the inner workings of a secretly miserable family... Read more... |
SuzanneSaturday, 15 March 2014
As she proved in her exquisite debut Love Like Poison, French director Katell Quillévéré has an astonishing knack for delicately told stories which, in their sensitivity to character and credibility, pack a weighty emotional punch. And so it goes in... Read more... |
Nurses go to war in The Crimson FieldWednesday, 05 March 2014
It's going to be a long slog through the mud and blood of the Great War commemorations, but we're going to learn a lot along the way. Coming up next month on BBC One is The Crimson Field, a new drama about nurses on the Western Front in 1915.... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bordeaux: Bottoms up for RameauSunday, 02 March 2014
Jean-Philippe Rameau, the most radical and inventive of French composers before Berlioz, died in Paris 250 years ago this September. 16 years later a gem among theatres opened its doors for the first time with a long evening’s entertainment... Read more... |
DVD: Becoming TraviataFriday, 28 February 2014
Only the most antagonistic of diva fanciers, opera queens, call them what you will, would deny coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay her place as one of the great singing actresses of our time. The size and range of the voice are rather more limited for... Read more... |
Stranger by the LakeThursday, 20 February 2014
The lakeside beach that is the only scene of action in Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake is a concentrated crucible of desires. The sense of languid summer and the limpid beauty of the lake itself, beautifully and compellingly caught throughout... Read more... |
Berlinale 2014: The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, Yves Saint Laurent, La belle et le bêteSunday, 16 February 2014
You couldn’t imagine The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (****) coming out of anywhere except France. Three years ago the enfant terrible of French literature vanished for some days from a book tour, giving rise to rumours as extreme as that he had... Read more... |
Cabell, RPO, Dutoit, Royal Festival HallThursday, 13 February 2014
This was the first of three Royal Festival Hall concerts during the first half of 2014 from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and its principal conductor Charles Dutoit, all three programmes consisting entirely of French music. The other two will be... Read more... |
Manon Lescaut, Welsh National OperaSunday, 09 February 2014
As before, WNO have a theme for their new opera season: this time it’s Fallen Women, a topic that might well attract the attention of the Equal Opportunities Commission. Surely men have the right to fall as well; we await, in June, The Fall of the... Read more... |
Royal Cousins at War, BBC TwoThursday, 06 February 2014
World War One overkill - if you'll pardon the expression - is a clear and present danger as the centenary commemorations gather pace, but this investigation of the roles of the interlinked royal families of Europe in the onrush of hostilities was as... Read more... |
