Arts Reviews

Someone needs to write a history of vibrato. Clearly this should be Roger Norrington: to judge from his words on Radio Three recently he has given the topic much thought and come up with some historically-based conclusions. I suspect he isn’t going to do it, though, because, like me, he is too busy chiselling out a new -ism on the back of his research, by which he hopes to effect yet another revolution in performance practice. But the bare bones of the story are straightforward enough. Vibrato, both in orchestral playing and in singing, became acceptable in classical music-making no earlier than 1920. It had existed before this in more

Tony Manero 18, Key Cities This is a Chilean film of the kind that is probably only showing at an independent cinema quite far from you until last Thursday but that is life, so get over it. Also, the only Easter alternative seemed to be a big action flick starring Vin Diesel whom I have nothing against personally, but whose performance in The Pacifier I did not admire particularly. (I also felt Arnold Schwarzenegger had rather got in first as the big, tough guy who comically does babysitting in Kindergarten Cop, but that may be just me.) Anyway, I didn’t see Tony Manero at the cinema, because the distributors were

‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio. ‘Radio is a way of binding people together,’ says Lesley Douglas, former Controller of Radio 2 in a Guardian magazine cover-story this week celebrating the richness of British radio. It could be the answer to our editor’s quest for what it means to be British, since 90 per cent of us are supposed to listen at some time to a radio station of some kind, whether it be local and illicit or the behemoths created by the BBC. Douglas was writing

Die Feen Châtelet, Paris Ernest Bloch’s Macbeth Bloomsbury Theatre Wagner wrote his first opera Die Feen (The Fairies) when he was 19 and 20. It was never staged or performed at all in his lifetime, and first performed in Munich in 1888, Richard Strauss having conducted the rehearsals. It was a big success, but has only been revived rarely, and the production which I saw at the Châtelet in Paris last week, of which there are five performances, was the first I have seen. It was rapturously received, and rightly so. Wagner thought little of it, gave the score to Ludwig II for Christmas in 1865 — the only score

Swan Lake American Ballet Theatre, London Coliseum A complex, somewhat troubled history has turned Swan Lake into the most manipulated ballet ever. The lack of strict historical constraints has frequently led ballet directors, repetiteurs and choreographers to feel more or less free to intervene in the text, often twisting its narrative and altering the traditional, though not original, choreography. Take, for instance, Kevin McKenzie’s production for American Ballet Theatre, which strives to make the most of the ballet’s performance tradition while at the same time peppering the work with not so stylistically and dramaturgically appropriate additions. In line with other and historically more famous versions, this one also uses the