Donald McDonald

Natalia Aroyan and friend at Sydney Opera House

21 December 2019 9:00 am

It’s summer in Sydney, so there is an Opera Season. Two productions by the distinguished British director David McVicar –…

Hugh Ramsay “Miss Nellie Patterson” 1903

14 December 2019 9:00 am

This is a great time of the year to visit Canberra and the National Gallery. Despite some ‘gender equality’ grandstanding…

Portrait of Rear-Admiral William Bligh (detail) Alexander Huey, 1814

7 December 2019 9:00 am

Hero or Villain? That is the question posed about William Bligh by an exhibition currently at the Australian National Maritime…

The Memory Pool

30 November 2019 9:00 am

‘Tis the season to be planning your holiday reading. I take inspiration from the marvellous bookshop in the beautiful lobby…

William Dobell “Woman in a Salon (Helena Rubinstein)” 1960

23 November 2019 9:00 am

She was a girl from Coleraine who became the world’s first self made multi-millionairess. Born in Krakôw, Poland in1872, she…

Caroline O’Connor is the Spider Woman

16 November 2019 9:00 am

They wrote musicals based on the most unlikely material but John Kander and Fred Ebb enjoyed ultimate success with Cabaret…

Jacqueline Dark, Taryb Fiebig and Helen Sherman

9 November 2019 9:00 am

Vivaldi is having further boosts to his popularity with the Brandenburg Orchestra delivering cracking performances of his Four Seasons in…

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X

2 November 2019 9:00 am

Baron François Gérard would be astonished that his vast 1825 painting of The Coronation of Charles X is the inspiration…

Andrew Tink. [Photo: Elizabeth Tink]

Andrew Tink

26 October 2019 9:00 am

A serious bout of ill-health forced him to abandon a successful career in politics but, in the intervening 10 years,…

Shirley Hazzard

19 October 2019 9:00 am

A woman working on a thesis about Shirley Hazzard is a character in A Life to Come, the award-winning novel…

Anna Karenina

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Tolstoy’s most fascinating character, Anna Karenina clearly fascinates David McAllister who has recently announced his 20th and final season as…

Violins of the ACO with Richard Tognetti

5 October 2019 9:00 am

Every year is a year of anniversaries, not least 2020 with the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage along the…

See You at the Toxteth

28 September 2019 9:00 am

The Toxteth is a hotel on Glebe Point Road in Sydney. Cliff Hardy probably called it a pub. Hardy was…

In Vogue

21 September 2019 9:00 am

A kangaroo on the beach with a model was the unsubtle cover of Vogue in December 1965. It will be…

David McVicar’s production of The Marriage of Figaro

14 September 2019 9:00 am

It was hailed as a masterpiece at its premiere in Vienna in 1786; it still is a masterpiece. The Marriage…

Cast members Jonny Carr and Geraldine Hakewell

7 September 2019 9:00 am

John Howard and Tom Stoppard have something quite wonderful and rare in common: they are both members of the Order…

Jeffrey Smart exhibition Constructed World

31 August 2019 9:00 am

There are just a few weeks left to catch the Jeffrey Smart exhibition Constructed World at the Art Gallery of…

Culture Buff

24 August 2019 9:00 am

A new book reminds us, perhaps unintentionally, that not everything that has mattered in the performing arts started with the…

Maxine Peake

17 August 2019 9:00 am

We live in a time of paradoxes. The NSW Parliament has just legislated for terminations to be performed from 22…

Sylvia in Houston

10 August 2019 9:00 am

Houston is a prosperous Texan city, the hub of the US oil and gas industries. And home to the city’s…

Dominic Smith

3 August 2019 9:00 am

He’s an Australian-born international best-selling author. Dominic Smith was born in Brisbane in 1971 to an Australian mother and an…

King’s College choristers at ease

27 July 2019 9:00 am

It was a beautiful autumn morning when we went up to Cambridge for a meeting at King’s College. Christopher Hogwood…

Paul Dyer conducting the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

20 July 2019 9:00 am

Only a person who is more or less my age can have a direct recollection of the 1953 coronation of…

Shakespeare in Love

13 July 2019 9:00 am

For centuries plays have been derived from novels, myths and legends but only recently have we become used to plays…

Margaret Olley Pomegranates in a basket 1967

6 July 2019 9:00 am

It’s a barely forgivable cliche to call them ‘the odd couple’; but Margaret Olley (1923-2011) and Ben Quilty (b. 1973)…