Listings
Ismene Brown
It's time to dust down your tent and ice-box and plan some summer breaks with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide - listings and links for all the UK festivals this summer, from rock by the lochs to DJs in London parks, and catching classical and opera on the way. See theartsdesk's invaluable European festivals 2011 guide too. SCOTLAND Knockengorroch World Ceilidh, 26-29 May, Drumjohn, GallowaySecret Scottish streams and woods resound to roots music sounds, with Adrian Edmondson & the Bad Shepherds, Salsa Celtica, Horace Andy & Dub Asante, DJ Yoda, Russkaya Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Contemporary music and 11 new productions are at the heart of a strong ENO 2011-12 season announced today. Highlights include a new opera from Damon Albarn (Doctor Dee) on the extraordinary life of Elizabethan alchemist and intellectual John Dee, the UK premiere of Detlev Glanert's Caligula, Wolfgang Rihm's chamber opera (which will open at the Hampstead Theatre) Jakob Lenz and the first Coliseum staging of John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer, "the most controversial opera of the past 50 years", according to artistic director John Berry.Contemporary music and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The 2011 BBC Proms open on Friday 15 July and close on Saturday 10 September. Strands linking the 90 concerts include Choral Sundays, film and TV music proms, French music, unusual concertos, Liszt and Frank Bridge focuses, and the first Comedy Prom. We bring you the full listings guide below and will be making our recommendations shortly before the box office opens on 7 May.Choral Sundays feature large-scale works such as Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony (in its Proms premiere), Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Verdi and Mozart Requiems. Unusual concertos are featured, with multiple soloists Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Opera House's 2011-12 season takes place under the shadow of a 15 per cent cut in public funding and the looming London Olympics. There are 12 ballet bills and 18 opera nights, including one new opera and two new short ballets.Tony Hall, ROH chief executive, said there would be no open session for the attendees to ask questions. He said, “Much of our conversation has been about the Arts Council and cuts, and of course we’ve taken our fair share of the pain.” He said the frontloading of the cuts would reduce the next season but the main effect would be delayed until after the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Family-favourite storyballets dominate Birmingham Royal Ballet's 2011-12 season, as the company looks forward to a stringent year. Beauty and Beast, Hobson's Choice and Far From the Madding Crowd, three of director David Bintley's full-lengthers, and the iconic Peter Wright Nutcracker for Christmas aim to be money-spinners for three mixed programmes, culminating in a Bintley creation next summer on an athletic theme to chime with the 2012 Olympics.Three mixed bills, entitled "Autumn Glory", "Spring Passions" and "Summer Celebrations", field works by classic Royal Ballet choreographers Ninette Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The 2011 Edinburgh International Festival, running 12 August-4 September, has been announced, on a theme of the Far East and the Far West. Offerings include the National Ballet of China, Korean and Vietnamese contemporary dance, traditional Indian music from Ravi Shankar, Japanese photography, a Mandarin King Lear, a Peking Opera Hamlet, a Korean The Tempest, and plentiful Asian composers and performers in classical-music programmes. World names appearing include Martha Argerich, Magdalena Kozená, Simon Keenlyside, Charles Dutoit with the Philadelphia Orchestra, René Jacobs, Murray Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Chichester Festival has unveiled its 2011 season running from May to November, and priority booking opened yesterday. Terence Rattigan's centenary is celebrated in style, including two famous and fine plays, The Deep Blue Sea and The Browning Version, and a first-ever showing of a script he wrote for television about Nijinsky and Diaghilev, now written into a new play by Nicholas Wright. Other world premieres are David Hare’s South Downs and a new version of Eduardo De Filippo's The Syndicate, starring Ian McKellen. Three musicals - She Loves Me, Singin’ in the Rain and Sweeney Todd - and two Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Family favourites and fewer dates on the spring split tours mark straitened circumstances for Britain's busiest touring company, Birmingham Royal Ballet, keeping a smiling, child-friendly face on. Coppelia, La Fille mal gardée and the London premiere of the new Cinderella are the mainstays of the repertoire in the season marking BRB's 20th year in Birmingham, whence the former Sadler's Wells Ballet moved in 1990.Viewings of Blanchine's amusing gangster ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and BRB director David Bintley's ballet to Carl Orff's popular Carmina Burana are intercut with demanding Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Opera outside London flourishes in the hands of Opera North, Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera. In 2011 the popular hits such as Carmen, The Merry Widow and La Traviata intermingle with rarer landmarks such as From the House of the Dead, Orlando and Intermezzo. Wagner has a fine showing in the North and West from Opera North and Welsh National Opera. A true rarity is Opera North's British premiere of a Polish opera on a Gogol story, The Portrait, directed by the great David Pountney, whose wonderful Cunning Little Vixen production with the late Maria Bjørnson is revived at Scottish Read more ...
Ismene Brown
2011 at Covent Garden launches with two much-anticipated world premieres in February: Christopher Wheeldon's first full-length storyballet, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole, written by Richard Thomas (of Jerry Springer, the Opera), and dealing with the tragic modern life of a Playboy model. The Turnage is one of eight world premieres at the Royal Opera during 2010-11, which also fields two UK premieres, five new productions and 14 revivals. The Royal Ballet listings offer eight full-length ballets and five mixed programmes. Details of all events below. Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Mahler, Mahler and anyone who even remotely knew Mahler. There is, of course, more to the South Bank's 2011 season listings than this but the great symphonic agoniser (and his many chums) forms the bedrock of the classical programming as we all go wild for the centenary of his death this year. In contemporary music big names such as Rumer, Elaine Paige and Brian Wilson will pack them in, while newcomers like Josh T Pearson and Melissa Laveaux have first Southbank exposure. The London International Mime Festival in January leads off dance and performance, which has a child-friendly look this Read more ...
Ismene Brown
In 2011 the Barbican offers eminent theatre directors Robert LePage and Peter Brook along with the diversions of London International Mime Festival. Music includes composer focuses on Unsuk Chin, Brian Ferneyhough and Peter Eötvös, and high-profile visits by great conductors Sir Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis and Barbican resident guest Valery Gergiev. Joan as Police Woman, the Waterboys, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Marianne Faithfull are among contemporary music performers while video and media art is featured from Ryoji Ikeda and Cory Arcangel. Full season listings below. Read more ...