Henrietta Bredin

Henrietta Bredin finds out what it is that draws actors to the gruelling one-man show Judi Dench says she’d never do it, Roy Dotrice didn’t do it for 40 years but started again in 2008, Joanna Lumley says that managing to do it while looking at her own reflection in a mirror made her feel afterwards as if she could handle pretty much anything. Let’s do it, it’s the one-man, or one-woman, show. Stepping on to a stage or in front of the camera to perform requires a particular brand of courage but how much more focused and intense is that experience if you undergo it entirely on your own?

Katie Mitchell explains to Henrietta Bredin how she is creating a parallel film world with Purcell’s opera It is 350 years since Henry Purcell was born and his music is, gloriously, being played and sung all around the country. And there are a lot of different Didos about: Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage at the National Theatre; Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas pretty much all day on BBC Radio Three a couple of weekends ago; at the Royal Opera House in a joint venture by the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet directed and choreographed by Wayne McGregor (see review page 38); and, in another joint venture, by English National Opera and the Young Vic, as After Dido, directed by Katie Mitchell.

Has anyone else noticed how frequently and with what merry relish BBC Radio 3 announcers are saying Jiří Bĕlohlávek? (Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra just in case you were wondering.) I think they're so thrilled to have (pretty much) mastered the pronunciation that they just can't help themselves.

Henrietta Bredin talks to the baritone Gerald Finley about how he portrays ‘the destroyer of worlds’ At precisely 5.30 a.m. on Monday 16 July 1945 the world entered the nuclear age. The first atomic bomb exploded in a searing flash of light and a vast mushroom cloud unfurled in the skies above New Mexico. ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,’ thought Robert J. Oppenheimer, the physicist who had masterminded its development. It was typical of the man and the deep contradictions within his nature that these lines from the Bhagavad Gita should have come to mind, and that he should have named the project the Trinity Test in response to poetry by John Donne.

A new arts centre with no public subsidy? Henrietta Bredin talks to its founder Peter Millican Let’s get one thing out of the way immediately — King’s (with an apostrophe) Cross in London is the location for the new and very splendid mixed-use office building and performance space, Kings Place, which has no business letting a misguided graphic designer decide to drop the apostrophe. It should be King’s Place, please. Now, onwards. This project is the brainchild of Peter Millican, a Northumbrian developer whose work has been, until now, mostly in and around Newcastle. He has wanted for some years to combine business and the arts in a single building, with beneficial effects for both, and particularly wanted to find a site close to an international travel hub.

Henrietta Bredin talks to Ian McDiarmid about turning a novel set in Scotland into a play Ian McDiarmid possesses a voice that, if he chose to let it, could curdle milk. Half-strangled and poisonously clotted it emerges in an evil flow in his portrayal of the Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films. As Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, it is all silken seduction and hidden threat. In his next stage role, his voice will be heard, not just as an actor, but as the author of an adaptation of Be Near Me, the novel by Andrew O’Hagan. He will play Father David Anderton, a Catholic priest in a small Ayrshire parish, in a joint production between the National Theatre of Scotland and the Donmar Warehouse. How had this happened?

It is worth remembering that the BBC, despite its recent, excessively well-aired problems, gives us a great many stimulating, well-made programmes, on both radio and television. Rather surprisingly, given its format and the yawning, ever-present potential for dumbed-down disaster, the BBC2 Maestro series, aired in August/September this year, turned out to be all of those things. How could this be? A talent contest for ‘celebrities’, in which they were required, with no previous experience, to conduct a full symphony orchestra? It could hardly fail to trivialise a skill which takes years to acquire and which even musicians find hard to analyse or describe. What actually happened was fascinatingly revealing.

Henrietta Bredin talks to Edward Gardner, English National Opera’s music director There is a ridiculously tiny, narrow room carved out of the foyer of the London Coliseum, known as the Snuggery. I think it was originally intended as somewhere for King Edward VII to retire to for a touch of silken dalliance or simply to use the lavishly ornate mahogany facilities. At any rate it’s a handy place in which to settle for a conversation with English National Opera’s music director, Edward Gardner, who is fresh — and he does look it — from a rehearsal with the chorus for a new production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, opening on Monday. This is a challenging opera for any company to perform and the first thing to be settled is the choice of version.

Henrietta Bredin on how book illustrations can bring the narrative to life The illustrations in children’s books play a crucial role in expanding the imaginative horizons of the reader and fixing the story in the memory. The very best book illustration is so inextricably linked to the text that it is hard to think of one without the other.

Henrietta Bredin talks to Peter Manning about taking risks and creating opportunities There is an almost palpable forcefield of energy around Peter Manning. You expect a crackle of static to explode when he shakes your hand or wraps you in an enthusiastic hug. Concertmaster of the Royal Opera House orchestra, founder of the eponymous Manning Camerata chamber orchestra and now music director of Musica Vitae in Sweden, his relish for a challenge, for fresh stimuli, is voracious. He is a violinist, a conductor, and now a galvanising producer and artistic director. His current, most pressing preoccupation is with a fabulously multi-layered and ambitious project, the performance of a new opera he has commissioned, for the Manning Camerata to play.