Reviews
igor.toronyilalic
To Charles Rosen it was a work of "rarely redeemed dullness". The wife of Emperor Leopold called it "German rubbish". It's pretty obvious why so many have objected to Mozart's final opera La clemenza di Tito. Tunes (memorable ones) are by and large lacking, which is odd for Mozart. The overture is not something you'd want to hear on its own. And the work's great solo arias are unwieldy in form (though fascinatingly so) and tricky to sing and separated by the vast wastes of a notorious recitative. Yet for me what the work lacks, it more than makes up for in dramatic clarity and economy, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death is the misleading, jokey title of a play about Shakespeare in his ignoble last years, unable to write further, isolated from his beloved London, and hemmed in by local politics. Shakespeare is invited to become a town councillor! To take sides in a dispute about land enclosures! It’s a cracking re-visioning of the genius whom films and myth have preserved in the aspic of lusty, piratic eloquence.In Edward Bond's creation of 1974, Shakespeare is a middle-class capitalist literary squire, who sits in his big Stratford garden, rich, lionised and 52 (old, in those Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Baker Street” and “Stuck in the Middle With You” will live forever. Once heard, each is never forgotten. Both are perfect. Both were written and sung by Gerry Rafferty, the subject of Right Down the Line, an affectionate David Tennant-narrated tribute to this stubborn Scotsman, who died in January last year. The story was told with warmth and his songwriting celebrated, but evidence for Rafferty’s troubled nature was never far.“Baker Street” flew into the charts in early 1978 as punk was supposed to be wiping the singer-songwriter off the face of the earth. Gerry Rafferty’s beard, the single Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The first time I ever saw Kaiser Chiefs was on Saturday morning children's television. While the musicians performed onstage, vocalist Ricky Wilson went walkabout, continuing to belt out "I Predict a Riot" while lurking out of view. Halfway through last night's gig I thought he was about to pull the same stunt when he bolted off shortly after a blinding live rendition of "...Riot". I was sitting in the front row of the balcony at the time. I looked to my left and suddenly Wilson was singing right next to me, serenading the stalls from above.It's unique moments like these, as much as their Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Can any drama work in which half the dialogue takes place by cellphone? Last night a new dose of Kidnap and Ransom gave this thorny question a thorough workout. Trevor Eve, bestubbled, gravelly and never very comedic, is back doing his Trevor Eve thing as Dominic King, a primetime hostage negotiator who never seems to have problems with his mobile battery. Clearly not an iPhone man.In this instalment he had just wrapped up a deal releasing 10 hostages in a crowded Srinagar when at the nervous hand-over bullets flew, the chief kidnapper was shot dead. In the ensuing melee a young couple ran Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Oh Land is Nanna Øland Fabricius. A proper pop star in her native Denmark, based on last night's show there’s no reason why she can’t be one here too. She’s been living in Brooklyn and the international market is clearly in her sights. The highlights from her packed gig at Heaven - "Sun of a Gun", "Wolf & I", "White Nights" and "We Turn it Up” - are sweet confections that ought to prove irresistible. Providing, that is, they’re served up correctly. But more on that later.Fabricius’s quality electropop is heavy on memorable singalong choruses and staccato vamps. It wasn't helped by Heaven’ Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
Following her nuanced turn last year in Mike Mills’ quietly wrenching Beginners, Mélanie Laurent makes her directorial debut with another dimly idiosyncratic tale of thirtysomethings finding love and facing grief. Alas, while Laurent and her co-writers Morgan Perez and Chris Deslandes initially set up some intriguing dynamics, they give way all too swiftly to predictable scenes and a crushingly saccharine third act that’s no less risible for being heartfelt.The plot centres on two sisters, adopted bookseller Marie (Marie Denarnaud) and aspiring musician Lisa (Laurent). Their opposing Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In a year of centenary celebrations paying homage to Captain Scott and the men who accompanied him to Antarctica at the end of the Edwardian age, two exhibitions in London have assumed pride of place. The Natural History Museum places a spotlight on the scientific achievements of the Terra Nova expedition. At the Queen’s Gallery two photographic archives capture with remarkable immediacy the sheer splendour of the polar regions. A smaller exhibition in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff focuses on a less familiar aspect of the iconic story: the fact that Scott’s expedition had a strong Read more ...
fisun.guner
As he readily acknowledges himself, Jeremy Deller can’t paint and he can’t draw, so he never went to art school. For many artists of his generation (he’s 46), this lack of traditionally based skills seems not to have presented a problem. But Deller clearly isn’t one for trying to be good at things he’s so self-evidently bad at, so instead of going to art school he studied art history, and then began to follow his interests. Luckily for him, and us, all the stuff that interests him falls within the periphery of what one might call art.Deller’s interests are diverse, but are primarily based on Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Ever since that first Saturday night when Simon Cowell pulled back the curtain on mainstream pop music's most underhand dealings, there has been a certain type of artiste that a certain type of person struggles to take seriously. What is often forgotten by those of us whose interest in chase-your-dream music-based reality television shows stops at the commercial breaks, however, is that between the tone-deaf girl group that gets voted off in the first week and the insipid, interchangeable boys beloved of teenage girls there is usually at least one remarkable voice. In 2010 that voice belonged Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Despite the best attempts of Stephen Johnson’s programme notes to create synthesis from last night’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert, there was something rather smash and grab about the programming. It was as though Jurowski, suddenly inspired to play classical Supermarket Sweep, had emerged with a disparate trolley-load of Zemlinsky, Mozart and Szymanowski – oh, and the Brahms Violin Concerto. With a full crowd lured by big-name soloist Joshua Bell, the question was not only what the LPO would make of this disparate collections of curiosities, but also the audience.The Brahms concerto Read more ...
Ismene Brown
It's a rare ballet where the culmination you hope for is that the young guy gets to take over the business (an idea for a Murdoch ballet there, one day?). David Bintley's Hobson's Choice is surely his very best work, unmitigated pleasure for the spectator - an innocent, beautifully executed period comedy full of atmosphere, good characters, a perfect emotional arc and a perfectly brilliant musical score. None of this is simple to carry off.Made in 1989 for Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet - as Birmingham Royal Ballet used to be - it takes Harold Brighouse's 1915 play, and possibly more famously Read more ...