Prague
theartsdesk in Prague: Two Faces of MuchaSunday, 05 May 2013
The work of Alphons Mucha (1860-1939) is immediately identifiable with its decorative flowers, delicate colours and wide-eyed women staring seductively at the viewer. He was one of the pioneers of art nouveau and the art of advertising. In Prague an... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Welsh National OperaMonday, 25 February 2013
Janáček’s opera subjects – the 300-year-old opera singer, the composer with a mad mother-in-law, the Siberian prison camp – are by any standards a fairly rum collection. But The Cunning Little Vixen is arguably the most deviant of the whole bunch.... Read more... |
Václav Havel, 1936-2011Sunday, 18 December 2011
In Rock’n’Roll, the play by Tom Stoppard, two characters haunt the stage without actually appearing on it. One of them, Syd Barrett, absconded from Pink Floyd to lead the life of a hermit. The other, Václav Havel, gave up the life of an... Read more... |
DVD: Larks on a StringThursday, 17 March 2011
The Czech New Wave sprouted out of a fertile collaboration between film and fiction. Milan Kundera started out as a lecturer in film, lest we forget; one of his pupils was Miloš Forman. Both flew the communist nest to live and create abroad, which... Read more... |
DVD: A Blonde in LoveMonday, 24 January 2011
Miloš Forman’s second feature, from 1965, catches the absurd atmosphere of the director’s native Czechoslovakia with both quiet desperation and raw tenderness. Heroine Andula (Hana Brejchová) works in a shoe factory in a town where women outnumber... Read more... |
František Vláčil Season at the BFITuesday, 14 September 2010
Of all the schools of film which were allowed to sprout behind the Iron Curtain, it was in Czechslovakia which contrived to export its work most successfully to the West.Poland had Andrzej Wajda. Hungary had István Szabó. But Czech cinema seemed to... Read more... |
Remembering Charles MackerrasWednesday, 21 July 2010
Perhaps we can drop the "sir" here, as he preferred, though most of the contributors below only knew him in his knighted later years. No death of a musical great, at least since the departure of Mstislav Rostropovich, has caused such a flurry of... Read more... |
Sir Charles Mackerras, 1925-2010Thursday, 15 July 2010
Sir Charles Mackerras has died at the age of 84. In tribute to one of the most highly respected and best-loved of conductors, theartsdesk republishes here an interview he gave on the eve of conducting Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Sir Charles MackerrasThursday, 22 October 2009At 84 years of age, Sir Charles Mackerras is one of the best-respected and best-loved operatic conductors working in the world today. He conducts Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the English National Opera tonight and, despite bouts of... Read more... |
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