Arts Reviews

English National Opera has arrived at the Dead City, and who, before Christmas, would have given odds that this new production of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt would ever make it this far? This is late-Romantic music-drama on an exuberant scale; it simply doesn’t lend itself to pubs and car parks (even the reduced version staged – superbly – at Longborough last summer used an orchestra of some 60 players). Korngold deals with strong emotions (grief, delusion and obsessive love) with a melodic generosity that has historically provoked the prissiest instincts of the British operatic establishment. The Royal Opera held its nose and staged a brief run in 2009, before sweeping

Over the past few years, Lana Del Rey has been engulfed in acclaim: Variety’s Artist Of The Decade, the first recipient of Billboard’s Visionary Award and Rolling Stone UK’s endorsement as ‘the greatest American songwriter of the 21st century’. Bruce Springsteen has named her ‘one of the best’ and Courtney Love called her a ‘true musical genius’. And now, with her long-awaited ninth studio album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd released last weekend, the critics have not held back. From the Guardian to the Financial Times, Del Rey’s new album has collected a string of 4- and 5-star ratings. But to call Del Rey’s journey a bumpy one would be an understatement. Just over a decade ago, the release of

Like a lot of modern day B-movie directors, the Enfield-based filmmaker Savvas D. Michael takes an almost tradesman-like pride in his output: the aim is to do as much as possible (artistically speaking at least) without splashing the cash. And if you’re partial to the output of Guy Ritchie – the former Mr Madonna whose style has shaped an entire generation of testosterone-laden British filmmaking – you’ll be hooked to his latest, Hitmen. For all Michael’s claims about the ancient classics (his previous film – about the underworld characters who frequent a North London social club – was sold as a modern day take on The Iliad), it’s clear he knows

In 1957 the BBC removed the head of the Russian Service. Anatol Goldberg was by all accounts a remarkable broadcaster, tasked with coordinating, producing and narrating the BBC’s radio output to the USSR at one of the most volatile periods of the Cold War. Internal reports praised his navigation of the ‘complications’ of Russian programming. So why was he demoted? The answer lies in the long history of British government interference in the World Service.  Today harmony reigns between state and Service: the government announced a one-off £20 million payment to the World Service in last week’s updated Integrated Review. Yet last year foreign-language broadcasting was facing a £28 million

The German composer Max Reger, born 150 years ago next week, is mostly remembered today for countless elephantine fugues and one piece of lavatory humour. When he was savaged by the Munich critic Rudolf Louis, he wrote back to him: ‘Sir, I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.’ The quip was probably borrowed from Voltaire, but since no one can find it in his writings the credit has gone to Reger. Max Reger was probably the most technically accomplished writer of large-scale fugues since Bach But let’s not dwell on the image of