A lockdown masterpiece and the Jessica Rabbit of concertos: contemporary classical roundup
So it finally happened: I experienced my first vocal setting of the word ‘Covid’. An encounter that was, inevitably, more…
Why are the Oscars such a lousy guide to great cinema?
Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland,predicted to win big at this year’s Oscars, is not a terrible film. It’s a slight, sentimental Grapes…
What's an art form that feels unpopular and pointless, but isn't? Video art
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
Boxed-up Churchill is a real work of art
Central London is becoming a paradise for modernists like me. First there was the extraordinary encasement of Big Ben in…
![English National Opera's triumphant new production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, directed by Daniel Kramer. [Photo: Alistair Muir]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/10/Opera_Exhibitions.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
A triumph: ENO’s Mask of Orpheus reviewed
ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…
The rude, ripe tastelessness of John Eliot Gardiner’s Berlioz is the perfect antidote to Haitink’s Instagram Bruckner
Conducting is one of those professions — being monarch is perhaps another — where the less you do, the more…
You leave awe-struck but also a bit frazzled: Holland Festival’s Aus Licht reviewed
In Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI hands become fists, arms and elbows clubs, shoving, pounding and ker-pow-ing the keyboard to near oblivion.…
If opera survives, it’ll be thanks to artists and curators, not opera houses
It was bucketing it down in Venice, yet the beach was heaving. Families, lovebirds, warring kids, a yappy mutt, all…
It’s ugliness, not beauty, that spurs us to action
Timothy Hyde’s Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye is not about why we find things ugly. It’s…
Dau is not just a pretentious fraud – it’s rather disgusting
The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The…
The brutish brilliance of Rebecca Saunders
If you take awards seriously (which of course you shouldn’t) you could argue that Rebecca Saunders is now Britain’s most…
The winner of the 2018 What’s That Thing? Award for bad public art is…
Not a bad year for the award. Honourable mentions must go to the landfill abstractions of Oxford’s new Westgate Centre,…
The Budapest Festival Orchestra make all other orchestra look routine and oafish
Looney Tunes was always at its best when soundtracked by a Hungarian gypsy dance. (Watch ‘Pigs in a Polka’ if…
Grief-conjurors, space-mincers and earth-shovellers: performance roundup
They enter two by two. Grannies, mainly. Headscarved, mainly. Some locking arms. A bit glum. Like rejects from Noah’s ark.…
Closing the Queen Elizabeth Hall invigorated the new music scene. Why reopen it?
Imagine the National inviting RuPaul to play Hamlet. Or Tate giving Beryl Cook a retrospective. The London Sinfonietta offered a…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
Country pleasures
The English weren’t the first cowpat composers. Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the art of frolicking in the fields to such heights…
Sound storms
Nothing pleased Iannis Xenakis more than a great big rattling storm. The sound of a thunderclap would have him running…
Sound storms
Nothing pleased Iannis Xenakis more than a great big rattling storm. The sound of a thunderclap would have him running…
Sound storms
Nothing pleased Iannis Xenakis more than a great big rattling storm. The sound of a thunderclap would have him running…
Apocalypse now
Gerald Barry loved playing organ for Protestants as they allowed him a lie in. Then they found out he wasn’t…
Apocalypse now
Gerald Barry loved playing organ for Protestants as they allowed him a lie in. Then they found out he wasn’t…
Apocalypse now
Gerald Barry loved playing organ for Protestants as they allowed him a lie in. Then they found out he wasn’t…
Snakes and ladders
In Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, the ‘exterminating angel’ of the title is a mystery illness. A debilitating virus — much…
Snakes and ladders
In Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, the ‘exterminating angel’ of the title is a mystery illness. A debilitating virus — much…
