Venice
Marina Vaizey
Terracotta warriors, Bactrian two-humped camels, Heavenly Horses, Buddhist caves, sand dunes, the world’s first printed book, a silk factory and temples galore including one that was the great mosque in Xi’an, were but some of the ingredients in a breathless first hour in a trilogy of programmes about the world’s oldest trading routes. They were opened up by the explorer and trader Zhang Qian of the Western Han dynasty, about 2,300 years ago.The Han were experts in mobile warfare and were searching for Heavenly Horses, to use instead of their sturdy but small ponies, the better to subdue the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
It can be given to few commercial galleries to have sustained a relationship with the same artist for over 130 years, but such is the link between The Fine Art Society and James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).The FAS was founded in 1876, and is still in its purpose-built original home in New Bond Street. The frontage was designed by EW Godwin, who also designed Whistler’s White House in Chelsea. It has many firsts to its credit, including commissioning Whistler to produce his superbly atmospheric etchings of Venice, which were published by the gallery in 1880. In 1883 Whistler’s monographic Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The New Yorker Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) was the classic poor little rich girl: insecure, a woman with scores, perhaps hundreds of lovers, longing for love, the writer of tell-all memoirs. What sets her apart is that she was also the creator of one of the world’s greatest collections of modern and contemporary western art. There are not only her massive donations to a variety of museums, but the legendary Peggy Guggenheim collection in her Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal, one of the most visited modern museums in the world, with some 326 works of art by 100 different artists. La Read more ...
David Nice
Scintillating gems scattered rather thinly through long-winded operas: that superficial impression of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s often delectable music isn’t going to be changed greatly by seeing his first success of 1903, Le donne curiose (“Nosy Women”, perhaps, or, if you want a better English title “The Merry Men of Venice”). It takes an enormous amount of charm to make you want to stay with this inconsequential adaptation of Goldoni – no proto-Feydeau when it comes to comic plotting – and fortunately this Guildhall team have it in spades.Perhaps a music college’s first duty to budding opera Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The epic and the intimate combine impressively in Jordanian director Naji Abu Nowar’s debut feature Theeb. The epic is there is the scale of the stunning desert landscapes that are the backdrop – though the desert itself almost feels like a character here, and generic allusions to the Western abound – to his World War One story of complicated Bedouin loyalties played out on the edges of the Ottoman Empire. The intimate is found in the close bonds that dictate characters’ behaviour, and particularly in the very subtly textured role of the film’s eponymous main character.Abu Nowar has drawn out Read more ...
David Nice
Lagoon, miasma and scirocco may seem as far away as you can get from the rolling hills and pleasant airs of the Wormsley Estate in deepest home counties territory. Nor are the bleached bones of Britten’s bleak if ultimately transformative operatic swansong the usual culinary fare many punters might have expected to go with their fine wines and gourmet picnics. Against the odds director Paul Curran makes it all work, going about as deep, disturbing and ambiguous as the work allows while still serving a star performance in Paul Nilon’s Aschenbach and adding to the opera-ballet dimension that Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Whatever you make of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs (Jiao you), it’ll likely have you looking at your watch. If you’re hypnotized by its almost narrative-free, stretched naturalism – stretched so far as to become effectively stylization – part of the interest will be in knowing just how long the director holds some of his crucial scenes; the closing one, wordless and virtually still, must come in at almost a quarter of an hour. If it’s mesmerizing self-indulgence that hits you instead, the question may be when to head for the door when this distinctly testing 138-minute work Read more ...
David Nice
It has to be the ultimate cornucopia of choral and early-instrumental invention. So long as the musicians immerse themselves in the beauty of a strange adventure, it doesn’t matter where you hear Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610: however selective the acoustic, you’ll always get something out of one rare combination of sounds or another. The challenge of The Sixteen on their latest tour was never going to be one of communication, only of adapting in the move between cathedrals and concert halls.If the Winchester experience began in the aural equivalent of a dimly-lit room, it ended in total Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
First the good news. At 73, is Plácido Domingo anywhere near retiring? Er, no. When the question came up in an interview on Sunday (on video below), he answered : "The reason I don't retire is because I can still sing." And then with a glint in his eye: "I still feel I have to know the the right moment. Not to sing one day more.... nor one day less."And more good news: Domingo does give an affecting performance as Francesco, the aged Doge of Venice in I Due Foscari, in a rather staid and conservative globe-trotting production of Verdi's early opera, which has also also been seen in Los Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The National Gallery has produced a revelatory and unprecedented exhibition which shows us an array of paintings from cabinet size to mammoth by a long acknowledged star: Veronese, probably the most flamboyantly exciting artist at the heart of the Renaissance in Venice.Paolo Caliari (1528-1588) known as Veronese in honour of his native city, was born in Verona the son of a stonecutter, and was originally destined to be a sculptor. Changing media, it is his 30-plus years or so in Venice at its artistic heights at the heart of the 16th century, that made him a force to be reckoned with, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
As you may recall, Jeremy Deller represented Britain at last year’s Venice Biennale and a distilled version of English Magic, his British Pavilion show, is now installed in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. It's an especially relevant first stop on a tour that continues to Bristol and Margate, since Morris features large in Deller’s idiosyncratic commentary on British culture. William Morris is best known as the brains behind the Arts and Crafts movement and designer of those famous wallpaper patterns, but he was also an ardent socialist keen to improve the lot of the poor – not Read more ...
Sarah Kent
What better way to celebrate Christmas than by contemplating this sublime altarpiece by the celebrated Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini? It hangs above a sidechapel in the church of San Zaccaria in Venice offering blissful relief from the noise and bustle of the narrow streets around San Marco. Listening with quiet concentration is one of the themes. Virgin and child sit on a raised throne absorbing the music played on a violin by an angel seated below them. With similarly downcast eyes, the saints standing on either side seem lost in thought.The saints are so immersed in reverie that, Read more ...