According to some, Onegin is the ultimate expression of John Cranko’s choreographic and theatrical genius. According to some, Onegin is the ultimate expression of John Cranko’s choreographic and theatrical genius. I disagree, for I think that other works are a much better testament to his unique creativity. But I like Onegin because it is one
English National Opera seems, at the start of the season, to be preoccupied, as we should all be, with how long we want to live, and in what kind of condition. In Janacek’s The Makropoulos Case the eponymous heroine is able, if she wants to, to live in a state of perpetual early maturity, but
‘Get inside the creative mind,’ urges the website of Studio 360, an innovative radio programme based in New York. ‘Get inside the creative mind,’ urges the website of Studio 360, an innovative radio programme based in New York. Set up by Kurt Andersen (of Spy magazine), it offers a weekly magazine programme about the arts,
The other weekend the Fawn and I were invited to stay at Chilham Castle. Obviously, if you’re Charles Moore, this is no big deal because it’s the kind of thing you do 24/7, 365 days of the year. For us, though — me especially, the Fawn being slightly posher than me — it was a
Peter Greenaway’s A Zed & Two Noughts, recently released on Blu-ray disc by the BFI, proves that the high-definition format isn’t just for blockbusters: it could have been invented for the British director’s first collaboration with the legendary cinematographer Sacha Vierny, a partnership which made explicit Greenaway’s debt to French auteur Alain Resnais and introduced
Jane O’Hara’s Culture Notes What happens when you take a girl from Scotland and her acoustic guitar, and uproot them to the same studio in Berlin where U2 recorded Achtung Baby? Judging by KT Tunstall’s third album, Tiger Suit, the answer is a collection of moody, blackish songs. Tunstall made her name with the folk-pop
We tend to take for granted the fact that the V&A houses one of the great wonders of the Italian High Renaissance: Raphael’s remarkable tapestry cartoons celebrating the lives of St Peter and St Paul. We tend to take for granted the fact that the V&A houses one of the great wonders of the Italian
Astonishingly, I enjoyed The Town even though it is a heist movie with set-piece shoot-outs and car chases and even though it doesn’t break any new ground, which is just such a faff anyhow. Astonishingly, I enjoyed The Town even though it is a heist movie with set-piece shoot-outs and car chases and even though
Zanzotti’s in Soho: redolent of surreptitious lunches fondly remembered, with its red gingham cloths and crusted tricolore paintwork, its ‘chianti-in-a-basket./ Breadsticks you snap/ with a sneeze of dust…And Massimo himself/ touring the tables / with his fake bonhomie.’ An old haunt, and the setting, in Christopher Reid’s poem ‘The Song of Lunch’, for a reunion
Pakistan. Big problem. Burning issue. Put it on stage so we can find out how we got here. J.T. Rogers’s new play opens in 1981 just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A young CIA officer, with the exotic and suggestive name of Jim, sets off for the badlands of Waziristan to offer his support
Choreographic legacies are tough to handle; there is always the risk of turning a once vibrant dance into a theatrically dead museum piece. The preservation of choreographic milestones is certainly paramount, but so is the need to provide artists with new challenges, especially within those companies that, having formed and thrived around a prominent artistic
As I descended, then descended again, then again, to get to my seat in the subterranean, uncomfortable Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, I thought gloomily of the number of miserable evenings I have spent there, and reflected that Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony was probably all too apt a name for what
Highgrove: Alan Meets Prince Charles (BBC2, Thursday) brought us two men who are not quite national treasures, though who would certainly like to be. It’s interesting that ‘Alan’ apparently needs no surname, though ‘Charles’ requires the identifying title. But in spite of the implied matiness this was a deeply old-fashioned BBC royal slathering operation, in
A.A. Gill talks to his friend Terry O’Neill, whose iconic photographs captured an entirely new kind of celebrity I remember the first time Terry O’Neill took my photograph: he wore blue; I wore grey and the Great War helmet of the third regiment of Pomeranian Grenadiers. We were at the Imperial War Museum, and the
William Pye has observed, somewhat wryly, that he’s better known among architects and designers than he is by the art-loving public. William Pye has observed, somewhat wryly, that he’s better known among architects and designers than he is by the art-loving public. There is a simple reason for this: in recent years he has had
No one who has seen The World at War will ever forget it. Thirty-six years on from its original broadcast, it still stands atop a glittering mound of British documentary television. But the great is about to be made better with a new restoration of the series, available on DVD and Blu-ray. The promotional material
The Kid is based on a true story and the book by Kevin Lewis, who had an horrific childhood taking in abuse, violence, poverty, starvation and abandonment by the social services. These books are called ‘misery memoirs’ and sell by the bucketload so I’ve even had a go myself. Now, I know what you’re thinking.
Ira Levin’s name isn’t nearly as well known as his titles. Ira Levin’s name isn’t nearly as well known as his titles. Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, both originally novels, are his most celebrated works. He also wrote quite a few Broadway hits. In his 1970s play Deathtrap he tries to imagine how an
It was being whispered last week at the first of the two Berlin Philharmonic appearances at the Proms that attendance across the board this year has been 94 per cent. If this is true, and is maintained to the end, it is a staggering achievement. Every year for the past 15 or so, the press
While the Royal Opera is touring Japan, its home team opened what looks to be mainly an unadventurous season with revivals of two celebrated productions by Jonathan Miller, for which Miller himself returned, having, it seems, modified his view of Così fan tutte drastically, while there probably aren’t two ways of looking at Don Pasquale.