Culture

In his introductory note to the programme of Opera North’s new production of Don Giovanni, Richard Farnes, who has recently taken over as the company’s music director, says ‘[there] will be many for whom this is their first Don Giovanni, indeed their first opera’. Obvious but wise words, which every director should have engraved above his or her desk or drawing board. Obviously, Olivia Fuchs, who directs this production, doesn’t. She has forgotten, supposing she ever thought of it, that her first duty is to make the action clear, and that that by no means precludes subtlety, innovation, freshness to make seasoned spectators think again.

The Guildhall Art Gallery has a well-defined policy of mounting temporary exhibitions of work by living artists, providing the subject matter is closely involved with the theme of London. David Tress, although born in the capital in 1955, has lived in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, since 1976, and has made a substantial reputation for himself as a painter of wild, not to say elemental, landscape. But, as the riverscapes of George Rowlett make abundantly clear, you don’t have to go to the country for passion and drama — the paint can swirl just as crazily or as poignantly over the Thames. Tress’s London scenes are equally robust, based upon childhood memories and refreshed by recent trips to the capital.

It has been Einstein week on television — the 50th anniversary of his death, and the centenary of the theory of relativity. This has handed producers a problem as knotty in its way as proving that e=mc2. How on earth do you put the most important yet the most incomprehensible scientific thought of the past century on to our screens without, for instance, having Davina McCall come on to yell at the top of her voice that gravity is the consequence of a curvature in space/time? In The Riddle of Einstein’s Brain Channel 4 found a novel way round it. They didn’t concentrate on what Einstein’s brain came up with, but on the brain itself. This had been neatly removed by the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem, purely in the interests of scientific research.

A tragic love story lies behind the jovial title to this delightful exhibition, which unveils the David and Liza Brown Bequest, the largest ever received by Southampton City Art Gallery. In 1967, David Brown was one of Britain’s most distinguished veterinary surgeons, the world authority on the cattle disease rinderpest, and newly appointed federal director of Veterinary Research for Nigeria. It was a daunting job, undertaken during a civil war and overseeing 400 staff, but he and his prospective wife, Liza Wilcox, eagerly accepted the challenge. Brown was divorced when he met Wilcox, a tie-dying fabric specialist. She was married, but for both it was the love of their lives. By the time they decided to up sticks in Kenya for Nigeria, she had already changed her name to Brown.

The so-called festive season is the time of year all serious drinkers dread. Their favourite pubs are filled with amateurs, largely consisting of braying office parties. It takes for ever to get served at the bar, and there is the ever-present danger of being sicked over by some daffy young secretary who has been overdoing the alcopops. Then when you’ve finally got your drink — my Christmas cheer used to consist of triple Scotches with a dash of ginger wine and a Guinness chaser — some moron from accounts will lean over and say, ‘Cheer up, mate, it might never happen.’ The trouble, of course, is that it already has.

By no means all commercial galleries run their Christmas exhibitions on into the New Year, but several that are doing so happen to be showing some of the most interesting work that has been around in months. However, if you are venturing out in search of artistic sustenance, do check gallery opening times to avoid disappointment. A glorious show of new work (until 14 January) at Timothy Taylor Gallery, 24 Dering Street, W1 (020 7409 3344), proclaims that Craigie Aitchison (born 1926) has lost none of his magic. The familiar subjects are once more in evidence, but given imaginative new treatment. A landscape is for the first time ever over-arched by a rainbow, reindeer crop the turf, and cypress trees feature in a big way.

No time is right to announce job losses, but picking just before Christmas seems to be favoured by many companies. One can’t help wondering if there’s sound business sense behind it or if it can be attributed to the streak of sadism that runs through British life. When last week the BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, chose to unveil his plans to remove up to 5,000 people from its payroll, I imagine a number of Christmases were blighted. Assuming this figure I’ve quoted is correct. I’ve seen several different totals and interpretations: 2,900 actual losses from mainly administrative departments, such as marketing, training and human resources, with another 2,400 staff ‘outsourced’ when some BBC commercial areas are sold or become joint ventures.

As if to answer my recent complaints (Arts, 30 October) concerning the dumb deserts of Radio Three between the end of the early-evening concert and the wall-to-wall small-hour tapestry of Through the Night, two weeks in succession have provided high seriousness, requiring committed attention, yielding deep artistic rewards, reminiscent of the great old days (let’s hope this is a trend; not all trendiness need be derogatory!). Both were anniversaries. We live in a culture wherein ‘minority’ interests seem ignitable only by a birthday or deathday.

Collecting stained glass seems to have fallen somewhat from fashion. In the first half of the 20th century, acquisition was lively and prices soared as the Big Three — William Burrell, Pierpont Morgan and William Randolph Hearst — vied for possession of the best examples of this essentially Christian artform. (There is no stained glass recorded before the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century. It may have become secularised later, but it was originally intended for purposes of religious instruction and adornment.) After the second world war, tastes changed and stained glass was largely ignored. In recent years, there has been something of a revival of interest, with Sam Fogg a pioneer in the field.

...Over her paint and her colours bentCan paint what it is to be innocent.Life, add thy wisdom, and at length bring usWhere springs the fountain of her genius.Walter de la Mare A few years ago, a couple found a small but elegant drawing of a young girl playing with her pets hanging at an art dealers. Intrigued by the intricate detail of the work, they brought the drawing home. The wife, Leonie Summers, an art-historian, established that their treasure was by an artist called Pamela Bianco, who died in New York in 1994. For a while the story stopped there and searches to identify Bianco through English art books seemed fruitless.

The reputation of George Frederick Watts (1817–1904) has not fared well for the past 80 years or so. He was much admired during his lifetime (his friend and fellow-artist Lord Leighton even dubbed him ‘England’s Michelangelo’), and his allegories of repentance and hope were still popular during the first world war, but his stock has slumped since then.

Dear, lovely but dangerously optimistic and quite often wrong Matthew Parris had a go at me in the Speccie the other week when en passant he mentioned TV critics who don’t like TV. This was terribly unfair. I don’t hate all TV, just about 99.5 per cent of it, which still leaves lots of room for stuff I do like, such as Peep Show (Channel 4, Tuesday and Friday), Line Of Fire (History Channel, Monday) and Blackpool (BBC1, Thursday). Blackpool is so good that I’m sure it’s going to become one of those landmark series that everyone refers back to all the time (cf. The Singing Detective, Our Friends in the North...), thus annoying the hell out of all the people who went, ‘“Comedy musical set up North with David solid-but-dull Morrissey”?