Listings
Ismene Brown
English National Ballet's 2011 season listings pivot largely on the populist Strictly Gershwin dansical before returning to The Nutcracker for next Christmas. In between there are two intriguing programmes given brief but welcome London viewings, highlighting two French masters almost never shown in the UK, Roland Petit and Serge Lifar. Both were young radicals in their time, Lifar as Diaghilev's star who went on to lead Paris Opera Ballet, and Petit, the post-war rebel who oozed French chic, sexuality and modern style in his ballets.Petit has a triple bill to himself, including the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates its 50th birthday season with the grand reopening of its transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre at a cost of £112.8 million. The temporary Courtyard Theatre folds curtains on the sold-out smash hit that is Matilda, awaiting one last flourish in the Olympics Shakespeare Festival next year before its intended demolition. New productions of Macbeth, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet inaugurate the revamped RST, while London operations transfer from the Roundhouse to Hampstead Theatre for the premieres of three new plays. The season is capped with a six-week Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Donmar Warehouse's 2011 season listings take audiences, as so often, in unpredictable directions, from the farcical tensions of American competitive spelling to the high tragedy of 18th-century Schiller. Full season guide below.King Lear, William Shakespeare, 3 Dec-5 Feb, 2011Derek Jacobi has long had his eye on the title role of King Lear and finally gets to play it under the direction of Michael Grandage, with whom he has worked profitably in Don Carlos and Twelfth Night. Read theartsdesk's Q&A with actor Derek Jacobi.The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, William Finn/Rachel Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The National Theatre's 2011 season listings offer double Shakespeare rations in an eclectic schedule: as Nicholas Hytner's unfussy, modern Hamlet goes on tour round the UK with an authoritative Rory Kinnear as the Prince, a new Twelfth Night by octogenarian Sir Peter Hall stars his daughter. Two scientific men go astray - Mary Shelley's monster creator Dr Frankenstein, who hits the boards under the direction of Danny Boyle, a stage talent poached for film stardom, and the drab dentist in Clifford Odets's 1938 drama, Rocket to the Moon. New plays about Israel and its effect on London Jews (by Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The 2011 season at Sadler’s Wells features attractions including horses and mass nudity on stage, the Pet Shop Boys' first ballet, William Forsythe, New York's American Ballet Theatre, the usual hip hop, flamenco and tango seasons, and generous helpings of Belgian and Catalan contemporary dance. Full listings guide below. Winter-Spring 2011Matthew Bourne's Cinderella, 30 Nov-23 Jan 2011, Sadler's Wells TheatreSet in London during the Second World War, Bourne's 1997 interpretation of Prokofiev's haunting score has, at its heart, a true wartime romance. Completely revised, this brand-new Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The spring 2011 season at Sadler’s Wells opens booking on 15 November. Featured attractions include horses and mass nudity on stage, the Pet Shop Boys' first ballet, William Forsythe, New York's American Ballet Theatre, the usual hip hop, flamenco and tango seasons, and generous helpings of Belgian and Catalan contemporary dance. Full season guide below. Autumn-Winter 2010 Lost Musicals, Darling of the Day, 22 Aug-19 Sep, The National Portrait Gallery’s Ondaatje Wing TheatreBased on Arnold Bennett's The Great Adventure, and adapted by Jule Styne (Gypsy, Funny Girl), E.Y. Harburg ( Read more ...
theartsdesk
It's that time again. The BBC Proms - in classical music terms, the greatest show on Earth - begin tonight with Mahler's massive Eighth Symphony. From Bryn Terfel in Wagner on the second night of the Proms to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Monteverdi's Vespers on the second-to-last night. theartsdesk's music writers choose the performances they're looking forward to. IGOR TORONYI-LALICThe credit crunch has no doubt played havoc on this year's season. Only one visit from an American orchestra and three big-gun orchestral visits from Europe will find their way to the Royal Albert Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Get your tent and ice-box and plan your summer's entertainment with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide - listings and links for all the UK festivals this summer, from heavy rock by Scottish lochs to Morris-dancing in the south west, and taking on opera, classical and major international arts festivals for good measure. If you know of a festival we've missed, please email info@theartsdesk.com with brief details of venue, booked artists and the website and we'll put it in for the world to see. ScotlandRock Ness, 11-13 JuneDores, Inverness-shire, ScotlandFatboy Slim, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Istanbul, Turkey, 3-30 JuneThe 38th annual music festival in the jewelled city of culture-clash continues its strong classical showing with Radu Lupu and Lang Lang, the Borodin Quartet and Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Equally attractive is the chance to hear a lively ethnic and folkloric music programme. www.iksv.org/english/Leipzig, Germany, 11-20 JuneThe 85th annual Bach Festival in his home town also features his two great champions Brahms and Schumann. The Gewandhaus Orchestra and Leipzig Ballet get involved in ballet to Bach by Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, Philippe Read more ...
theartsdesk
English National Opera’s 2010-11 season includes 10 new productions, including ENO premieres of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia and Handel’s Radamisto. There will be two new contemporary operas for the main stage: the world premiere of a new opera by Nico Muhly and the UK premiere of A Dog’s Heart by Alexander Raskatov. ENO directing debuts will be made by Benedict Andrews (The Return of Ulysses), Mike Figgis (Lucrezia Borgia), Terry Gilliam (The Damnation of Faust), Des McAnuff (Faust), Simon McBurney (A Dog’s Heart), Rufus Norris (Don Giovanni), Bartlett Sher (new Nico Muhly opera) and Dmitri Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Glyndebourne Opera's headline news this summer is its first-ever production of Britten's Billy Budd, to be directed by Donmar Warehouse director Michael Grandage in his own first venture into opera. A new Don Giovanni with Gerald Finley and a revival of the historic 1975 David Hockney Rake's Progress accompany listings of previous Festival productions of Macbeth, Cosi fan tutte and Hänsel und Gretel. Billy Budd (Britten) 23, 26, 29 May, 2, 5, 8, 11, 16, 19, 22, 27 JuneGlyndebourne’s first staging of the all-male opera of 1951, directed by Donmar Warehouse’s Michael Grandage in his opera Read more ...