Rome
Proms Chamber Music 7: Benjamin Grosvenor/Prom 60: Driver, RPO, DutoitTuesday, 02 September 2014
After the enervating excesses of Salome and Elektra at the weekend, the abundance of notes at the Proms continued in a piano recital and an orchestral showstopper, but this time with built-in air conditioning. After all, both 22-year-old Benjamin... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s GlobeThursday, 03 July 2014
For those who believe spin is if not a modern invention, then at least a modern fascination, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar offers a sharp rejoinder. Interpretation, manipulation and persuasion pervade this incisive drama about the assassination of the... Read more... |
Tosca, Longborough FestivalWednesday, 25 June 2014
For Longborough to open their new season with Tosca after last summer’s triumphant Wagner is to invoke Joseph Kerman’s famous diatribe against Puccini’s “shabby little shocker” in his fifties book Opera as Drama. Kerman used Wagner’s theories to... Read more... |
DVD: The Great BeautyTuesday, 07 January 2014
Sacrilege alert: half the films released in the cinema can almost as happily be seen on a smaller screen. Flatulent Hollywood comedies, low-budget domesic dramas, most romcoms, the oeuvre of Leigh and Loach. The Great Beauty is not one of those... Read more... |
theartsdesk's Top 13 Films of 2013: 5 - 1Tuesday, 31 December 2013
With the end of 2013 nearly upon us it's time for a last look back before we step forward into the unknown. Yesterday our rundown of the year's finest films took you from a radiant romance to a bristling biopic, but the nature of such lists means... Read more... |
Coriolanus, Donmar WarehouseThursday, 19 December 2013
In his later life Shakespeare, who never ducked ways to define a hero, offered the public a challenge: Coriolanus is a professional warrior, deaf to reason, patrician hater of people power. To beat all, this man’s man’s a mother’s boy. In a world... Read more... |
The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne TourSunday, 20 October 2013
“Aren’t you sick of Britten yet?” asked a colleague three-quarters of the way through the composer’s centenary year. Absolutely not; there have been revelations and there still remains so much to discover or re-discover. Yet re-evaluation can sour... Read more... |
Total War: Rome IIFriday, 13 September 2013
The greatest strategy videogames deliver a balance of time to think and pressure to act. The greatest strategy videogames deliver the thrill of battle mixed with clear strategic choice. Several entries in the Total War series count as great strategy... Read more... |
Caligula with Mary Beard, BBC TwoTuesday, 30 July 2013
Loving the title. Caligula with Mary Beard. Professor Beard has been mentioned adjacently to some rum types of late. Internet trolls. AA Gill. They pale into nothingness, do they not, next to the emperor who mistook his horse for a consul. And his... Read more... |
Prom 12: Accademia di Santa Cecilia Chorus and Orchestra, PappanoSunday, 21 July 2013
It’s a dilemma of anniversary years, and never more so than with Wagner’s and Verdi’s 200th birthdays: do you stick to the masterpieces or try and bring the rarities to life? No-one would have minded, I suspect, if Antonio Pappano and the Accademia... Read more... |
Caesar Must DieTuesday, 26 February 2013
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, set in an Italian prison, performed by criminals? If it sounds like a gimmick, the Taviani brothers’ Caesar Must Die is anything but. Following a popular tradition of freshening up Shakespeare's works with a shift in... Read more... |
Rome - A History of The Eternal City, BBC FourThursday, 13 December 2012
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian in a hurry - as well he might be when there’s a whole millennium to fit into an hour. A year ago we had his three-parter Jerusalem - The Making of a Holy City, now we’re well into Rome - A History of The Eternal... Read more... |
