Culture

Lost Highway Young Vic Aci, Galathea e Polifemo Middle Temple Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway, which was first performed in October 2003 in Graz, gets its first UK outing at the Young Vic in a production by ENO. It is impossible to imagine it being better done, and the roar of applause which greeted it at the end of its unbroken 90 minutes was, I hope, mainly evoked by the perfection of the execution. So many things could have gone wrong, and none of them did. The set consists of a black strip reaching from one side of the auditorium to the other, wide enough to cope with a car, as it does; and above it a large Plexiglass cube, containing a spiral staircase which is lowered for the characters to descend to the lost highway, or raised so other characters can intrude.

It is three years since I last wrote about my iPod. When I first bought the blighter, my then 12-year-old son warned me that it would prove a disaster and he was absolutely right. Unable to cope with the technology required to load the thing I enlisted the help of my nephew, Tom, who agreed to transfer my favourite CDs for 50 pence a time. By the end I had some 2,000 tracks on a machine the size of a cigarette packet. I was a little frustrated because it was capable of holding 10,000 tunes, and poor Tom’s computer had given up the ghost, but how I enjoyed putting on those smart white earphones on my rail journeys to London and choosing whether to listen to the Stones, the Grateful Dead or classic soul. Days after writing my column, however, the bloody iPod got jammed.

The relentless downgrading of the News to a series of shocking revelations about child abuse, bearded terrorists and the ghastly incompetence of our Olympic pretensions sent me straight to the World Service where even the shortest of hourly bulletins contains enough information to remind us that life goes on beyond our own limited horizons. On Sundays, too, there’s a new evening series presented by the illustrious Bridget Kendall. In The Forum she brings together an unusual selection of guests from around the world to ‘navigate’, as she explained, ‘the cross-current of ideas’.

Kate Royal’s name may not be instantly recognisable, but she is fast emerging as one of our great lyric sopranos. At the age of only 29, she has an exclusive contract with EMI and is booked to sing in the world’s major opera houses and concert halls. She is impressing both music critics and audiences with her ravishing voice and her statuesque beauty. But since many young artists who are prematurely praised fail to fulfil their potential, those looking after her interests guard her vigilantly. An interview with Gordon Brown would be easier to obtain. In fact, Kate’s schedule is so hectic that she has time to speak only on the telephone. And while her interview technique is very polished, not seeing the whites of her eyes is disconcerting.

Leatherheads PG, Nationwide Leatherheads is George Clooney’s third outing as a director and the first in which he plays a starring role, and it must have looked good on paper, just as anything with George Clooney’s name attached to it probably looks good on paper. A musical based on the plumbing-supplies aisle in B&Q would probably look good with George Clooney’s name attached to it, plus top Hollywood actresses would likely vie to play the U-bend or plunger. But there are dangers, I suppose, in not having to fight to get projects made and just how dangerous this can be is frighteningly evident in Leatherheads, a slovenly, timid, strenuously studied movie that takes forever to get nowhere, uninterestingly.

Why is it so difficult to make engaging television programmes about classical music? Time and again I have watched earnest and expensive attempts fail, despite every care in the planning, coming away grateful that the effort was made but aware that nothing lasting had been achieved. I felt like this after seeing the most recent episode of Sacred Music, dedicated to Byrd and Tallis and broadcast as part of a series on BBC4, with the admirable Simon Russell Beale as presenter. Ever since it became mandatory for peak-time television to entertain more than to educate, programmes about our cultural traditions have had a big problem of definition.