It’s not very often that you hear and seen an opera in which you worry about (or care) whodunnit. Even Nicol Muhly’s (I thought splendid) Marnie, which had its world première in London last year, and was derived from the suspenseful Hitchcock film, we didn’t so much worry about who did what, as about Marnie’s weird character. But David Sawer and Rory Mullarkey’s The Skating Rink, … [Read more...]
Verdi v Shakespeare? Falstaff’s no contest
Garsington Opera, Bucks. Verdi’s Falstaff seems a modern piece to me; despite its première being 1893, it feels as musically up-to-date as say, Puccini’s 1926 Turandot. Verdi knew what was up in music. Before 1887, when Otello was first heard, Verdi had been in virtual retirement since Aida in 1871, and clearly noted what Wagner and his ilk were writing. At Garsington, director Bruno … [Read more...]
The Shock of the Not Quite New: La Pittura dopo il Postmodernismo alla Reggia Caserta
Barbara Rose, "the high priestess of art," at Caserta I’ve just come back from Naples, following a few days at Caserta, to see a variant of an exhibition we saw in Brussels in September, 2016, under the title “Painting After Post-Modernism” sponsored by Roberto Polo, and curated by Barbara Rose. But it wasn’t so much an alternative version of the earlier show (which was also seen in Málaga), as a … [Read more...]
Beware the Eve of the Ides of March
Today is the Ides of March, so I should have known better than to go to a performance yesterday of Julius Caesar at London’s new theatre, The Bridge. Remember, it was on the eve of the Ides that Brutus, Casca, Cinna and the others formed their conspiracy to assassinate Caesar. I knew that Nicholas Hytner’s production, in the theatre he co-founded with Nick Starr, was to be a … [Read more...]
Some Home Thoughts from Abroad as Hurricane Hamilton Hits Britain
The hoop-la surrounding the London staging of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is almost as interesting as the musical itself. The ticket-tout-defeating instructions for admission to the Victoria Palace Theatre that came with my pair of house seats were more elaborate and demanding than those for our recent night out at Buckingham Palace. In the event, though, we were whisked past the velvet rope … [Read more...]
Imperium on the Potomac staged in Stratford-upon-Avon
Though a fan of Robert Harris’s fiction, I have to confess that I’ve not read his Cicero trilogy. That’s probably because I had insufficient exposure to Cicero during the many years I did Latin at my Kentucky high school. (Indeed, I have the impression that my father, at more or less the same schools, was much better grounded in the classics.) Of course, I’ve had to translate snippets of … [Read more...]
Reflections on the Bodleian’s Treasures — and a few others
To be honest, though for most of my adult life I’ve lived less than twenty minutes away from the Bodleian Library, I haven’t spent a great deal of time in its reading rooms – or even using its collections. When younger, I preferred my Oxford college library, and even then, I disliked reading, working and writing in the company of others. The Internet was made for people like me. But … [Read more...]
American Television’s Götterdämmerung Frightens the London Theatre Zone
Owing to circumstances of age and birthplace, I expect I was a fan of – perhaps addicted to – the American TV series of the late-1950s to early 1960s, The Twilight Zone. At this week’s première at the Almeida Theatre of Anne Washburn’s mash-up adaptation of eight episodes of this sci-fi schlock-horror entertainment, I think I did – just – recognise the theme tune. Much as I enjoyed the … [Read more...]
Forgetting Hitchcock
Unlike most of my colleagues, I liked, and was even a little moved by the world première of Nico Muhly’s Marnie by the English National Opera (it goes to the NY Metropolitan next year). I particularly relished Nicholas Wright’s libretto (despite about fifteen minutes-worth of repetition, which could be cut to the piece’s benefit). The merits of Wright’s libretto include the good-old dramatic … [Read more...]
Not Quite What You Will, but Almost
“What country, friends, is this?” You might well ask. In the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production of Twelfth Night the opening line is delivered by Viola/Cesario, played by Dinita Gohill, in gorgeous Indian get-up, and when we glimpse Esh Alladi as her twin, Sebastian, and Beruce Khan as a turban-topped Feste, you wonder whether director Christopher Luscombe has set Shakespeare’s … [Read more...]