France
Roméo et Juliette, Royal OperaWednesday, 27 October 2010
We sophisticates aren't really meant to enjoy Gounod. His simple 19th-century brew - five parts sentimentality, one part religiosity - isn't supposed to wash with modern palettes that crave layers of meaning, irony and social context. The ENO's... Read more... |
The Misanthrope, Bristol Old VicThursday, 07 October 2010
When Tony Harrison transposed his version of Molière’s The Misanthrope from the 17th century to the early 1970s, he managed with his characteristic and brilliant combination of savagery and wit to make the play feel totally contemporary. For... Read more... |
Les Pêcheurs de Perles in concert, Royal Opera HouseMonday, 04 October 2010
Ditch the divers, the video-projected sea and the Relevance with a capital R of ENO's production last season - which managed all three very well indeed - and what remains of Bizet's Pearl Fishers in concert (and in French)? Three ravishing arias,... Read more... |
Gauguin: Maker of Myth, Tate ModernThursday, 30 September 2010
Gauguin has always been the poor relation in the art-legend sweepstakes. Unlike Van Gogh, there is no heartwarming story of overcoming lack of technical facility; no ghoulishly enjoyable story of genius crushed by madness. Instead, there is a... Read more... |
Enter the VoidThursday, 23 September 2010
The constant strobing lights us white like we’re watching an Atom bomb test. From its garish credit sequence to the somehow inevitable vagina’s view of a penetrating penis, Enter the Void attempts assaultive cinema. You’d expect no less from Gaspar... Read more... |
On Adapting Birdsong for the StageThursday, 23 September 2010
I remember walking into the Hawthorn Ridge cemetery, seeing a grave of a 20-year-old boy who died on 1 July, 1916, and knowing for the first time why Sebastian Faulks needed to write Birdsong, and why I desperately wanted it to live and breathe and... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cambridge: 30th Cambridge Film FestivalSunday, 19 September 2010
Cambridge is in pre-term cocktail mood, almost. Its Film Festival slips in after Locarno and Venice, and as Toronto ends, and before Rome (increasingly important) and London (internationally a struggler) start. It tilts in the same direction as the... Read more... |
Phoenix, Picture House, EdinburghSunday, 29 August 2010
The French have got serious form when it comes to twisting the determinedly uncool into something hip, a fact Phoenix illustrated so winningly last year with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, a beautifully crafted album of mid-tempo soft rock which lounged... Read more... |
Bavouzet, Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen, Royal Albert HallSaturday, 21 August 2010
From Russian “avant-garde constructivism” to Estonian minimalism via a jazz-inspired French concerto and the defiant originality of Scriabin – last night’s Prom from Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra had a lot of ground to cover. I... Read more... |
Le RefugeFriday, 20 August 2010
Amid the cinematic dog days of late summer, François Ozon's Le Refuge comes aptly named: a character-led, intimate tale in the style of the late Eric Rohmer that will infuriate those who like their films more purely driven by plot even as it offers... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe: Marcel Lucont/ Primadoona/ Phil NicholTuesday, 17 August 2010
Marcel Lucont, “France’s greatest misanthropic lover”, comes on stage looking like the love child of Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge Gainsbourg - in head-to-toe black, sporting manly stubble and clutching a bottle of vin rouge. Is he an ethnic stereotype... Read more... |
BBC Symphony Chorus, Stephen Jackson, Royal Albert HallMonday, 09 August 2010
Every year there are a couple of Proms that have a haphazard look about them, as if a fire had suddenly broken out in the BBC archives, and the programming committee grabbed whatever came to hand – a piano quartet, a couple of choral odes and a... Read more... |
